SaySomethingin Italian (Beta)

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#91

This kind of thing is why I haven’t touched the Chinese course and won’t do so until it’s out of beta. Pedagogically, the method is amazing and I’m thrilled to use it with languages like Italian that are similar enough to Spanish that I trust myself to figure out and filter out the mistakes (same goes if you release a Dutch course, which is similar enough to German that I’ll go for it and not worry too much).

I’m also extremely happy and grateful to use it for languages like Japanese or Finnish, where I’m curious enough about them to want to learn some but have no ambitions to speak them to a very high standard. If I learn a few incorrect forms, who cares? As long as I can communicate.

But Chinese is a language I still want to speak really well one day and in spite of having once lived in China for a couple of years, I don’t trust myself to spot these little mistakes.

#92

Hey everyone! Sorry for the silence - I will catch up and reply to all of you very soon, but just letting you know that there is an update about to go out which should catch a bunch of these phrases.

The filtering tools are improving which will hopefully have an effect on all other courses as well.

Hopefully we’ll go live today, but it’ll depend on tech team availability

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#93

There are a few mistakes in the Chinese, for sure. But it’s really not a problem. Almost all of the phrases are not just correct, but also very natural.

And the brain does a really good job of picking up the patterns from incomplete information.

The further you go in the course, the more you get it.

#94

Italian v.1.1.0 is live! You should see:

-Some fixed audios (there will definitely be many more to fix)
-a decrease in weird phrases (there’ll still be some, but this should help)
-hopefully a complete fix for the course going out of sync

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#95

Grazie!

#96

Here’s Tom’s stream for anyone who wants to come and say hello!

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#97

For “the best way”, the app has “il modo migliorare” instead of “il modo migliore”.

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#98

Good catch!

#99

So, how do I access v.1.1.0, please? I’ve got the beta version on the app on my phone.

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#100

The App picks up the latest version automatically.

So you don’t need to do anything special.

Rich :slightly_smiling_face:

#101

The prompt is: You speak it, if you want. I exspected: " Parla, se vuole" or " parli, se vuoi" but the answer is " parla, se vuoi". Did I get it wrong or is there something mixed ?

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#102

That’s ok as informal Italian to the best of my knowledge

speak if you want

say it if you want

you speak it if you want

all are ok with the imperative 2nd person singular

parla se vuoi

the formal imperative is

parli

so the formal would be

lo parli se vuole

#103

Just to make sure: Is the prompt “you speak it” (present tense) or “speak it (!)” (imperative)?

In any case these us what I would say…

Informal/tu (like Welsh ti)
Present
You speak if you want - (tu) parli se vuoi
You speak it if you want - (tu) lo parli, se vuoi
Imperative
Speak, if you want - Parla, se vuoi
Speak it, if you want - Parlalo, se vuoi

Formal/lei (like Welsh chi)
Present
You speak if you want - (lei) parla se vuole
You speak it, if you want - (lei) lo parla, se vuole
Imperative
Speak, if you want - Parli, se vuole
Speak it, if you want - Lo parli, se vuole

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#104

It’s the informal and formal versions (vuoi for informal and vuole for formal)… At some point in the course it starts to introduce the formal stuff (marked by a “sir” or “madam” in the full sentence)… Usually around those phrases it’ll tend to push the formal versions. Annoyingly English doesn’t have any way to differentiate. But both would be a correct answer to the prompt, so when you say a different thing to the prompt just remind yourself you were right too :wink:

(I don’t know if you remember, but Welsh had this exact same issue!)

#105

Here’s a bit of feedback from Thursday’s intensive day of Italian. No doubt people are busy cleaning up the text, but it may be worthwhile noting stuff that I’d like to tidy up if I was doing it.Working chronologically through the text:

Sound quality of the English after “non voglio smettere di parlare con te”: “if” comes out as "“ifshsh” and this is repeated.
There may be a problem with my ears, but the first time "di più’ was presented, the “di” was indistinct and I needed the written text to work out what had been said.(Diolch byth!)

With “presto impareró di piu con te” the English version starts with “if” in the first spoken version.

The oddities of diction in English were irritating, and it took me most of the day to work out how any fluent English speaker who was not an actual slave could say things like “if soon I will learn more with you” . (Pretty naive for someone like me who’s used to working with AI generated translations, but it shows the content overall feels reasonably OK). The inappropriate “if” is repeated a number of times and is not reflected in the Italian.

Just after Aran’s indoctrination session on chunking, (sorry!) there’s an extra repetition of the student’s cue “and easily”, and I wondered if this was intentional.
The same thing happens with “adesso volevi” soon afterwards.

The AI makes a bloomer with “volevi chiederme” = “I wanted to ask me”

Sound quality: With “voglio parlare da” the woman adds an “M” to “da(m)”.

Content: “Soon are you well” Eh?

AI: “I’m sure IF I can help you” instead of “THAT I can …” /“Sono sicuro di poterte aiutare” This looks like a peculiar back-translation from the negative expression “I m not sure IF I can help you”

AI: " I think could you repeat a little more slowly?"
This is an odd question and in any case the Italian looks like a statement: Penso che potresti ripetere in po più’ …

AI: “It is important time to learn” should read "it is important TO HAVE the time to learn " OR "the time to learn is important " ( é importante il tempo per imparare)

AI: I think to find/Penso di trovare “I think of finding”, surely?

AI: “How you are doing? Como ti sta andando?” - How ARE YOU doing?"

#106

AI: This difficulty with idiomatic expressions is magnified when they are transmuted into, for example, “You are doing = ti sta dando”

Sound quality: The Italian for “it” is: no?/lo? Then kere?/Se lo?

I found the first four hours really rewarding, finding myself speaking proper Italian instead of my previous fake mix of Spanish, Latin and Inspector Montalbano (stronzo!). I was glad to have done it before the looming Japanese, which won’t be half so easy, and if I can find time between mending the hole in the roof and cutting brambles, I might have to cheat by going over the ancient stuff in advance - why waste an existing resource?
But as the long day went on I became increasingly frustrated with saying mainly just bits of sentences, often not adding much to the range of things I could say , and thinking if this was an evening class at 2 hours a week most of the class would have left after a fortnight, not just the kids with sweaty slippers. And by the end of my nearly nine hours I was thoroughly punch-drunk and almost angry with the exercise. On reflection though, even if you can’t yet say hallo, there is the option of getting out there somehow to taste Italian in the wild, and the course actually depends on some other more human interactions, even if they are with some other course (anathema!).
I came to SaySomething in Welsh too late to experience it properly but I feel there was more human content in it than this jumble of language islands (thank you Aran) which doesn’t yet amount to a habitable territory. I’m encouraged to try the day-a-month process and I feel it’ll give me at least a basis for a decent command of Italian.

#107

Oh, and I was quite pleased with the presentation of bits of different tenses, though my feeling for them was probably enhanced by recognising them from Spanish and French.

#108

"thank you Aran " above for the picture of language learning as a gradual coalescence of islands into a continental structure. Not ironic, though Chris saw it that way.

#109

The prompt was: you speak, if you want. No Imperative. That was, why I was puzzled. I thought, the right answer was either " ( ti) parli, se vuoi" or “(Lei ) parla, se vuole” but not " parla, se vuoi"

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#110

@brigitte If that was the prompt, your expectations were correct and “parla se vuoi” is a mix of the two.

Of course Kai is right about the similarity with the Welsh course because it’s impossible to know from the English prompt if it’s informal or formal. And if it worked with the Welsh course anyway, it sure can work fine with the Italian course.

However, having half sentence formal and half informal is different and, also considering that the course seems to never include pronouns, probably a bit confusing.

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