Actually, once you get the confirmation message at the bottom that the belt has changed, you can just tap back to Learning, and it will download the material from where you’ve changed to 
Dov’é Aran?
Sorry I hadn’t heard the calls! 
@Kai
- “non sono sicuro” does require “di”.
Non sono sicuro (o sicura) di… come dire, di cosa fare, di dove andare, di quando partire (or even just) di fare/andare/partire/
The only example without “di” I can think of right away is when it’s followed by “if”:
“non sono sicuro se” (there may be more I can’t remember right now)
“Non so” would work without “di” instead:
Non so… come dire, cosa fare, dove andare, quando partire, fare
Being more straighforward and quick, we probably use “non so” more often or “come si dice”, unless it’s about a choice between two ore more specific options, or it’s about doing vs not doing something.
About 2. “voglio fare pratica parlando” sounds fine and works both as “practice by speaking” and “practice through the method of speaking”
I guess the other nuance that Martin may have in mind, in the sense of “practice the speaking skill” would be “esercitarsi a parlare” which I understand is a bit further away from a word-by-word translation an complicated to match with other types of sentences using the same words
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Ooh, interesting! My brain absolutely disagrees - to me they all sound weird with “di” to the point where I would have said they’re wrong, so I checked with my parents who agree that it sounds more normal without it 
Might be a formal/informal thing, and maybe a north/south thing also?
Anyway, I did some googling to find many cases of people writing “non sono sicuro cosa succederà” and “non sono sicuro come dire…” so my feeling is it might not need to be corrected even if it’s formally incorrect, it seems common enough in speech…
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Ah, yes. Grazie mille
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That’s the fun of languages isn’t it!
I’m sure it’s not a formal/informal. I would not use it without “di” in any situation, 'cause to me it sounds weird to the point I would say it’s wrong, just like the opposite to you.
As for regional differences, there’s so many in Italy so that’s always a possibility.
In any case, now I’m curious, I’ll ask a bit around and share the results!
p.s. certamente vale la pena fare qualche ricerca, anche non sono sicura che la ricerca google sia sempre affidabile perché c’è tantissima gente che scrive in italiano inequivocabilmente sbagliato e si trovano tanto quelli che scrivono in modo corretto!
p.p.s just realized I wrote the previous sentence all in Italian 
if anyone needs a translation just let me know
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Prego
Of those 5, one was an AI translation of a song originally in English, so we can discount that and that leaves 4. One was on a Reddit post by a native speaker of English, another was by a self-described “multilingual citizen of the world” who was living in London when he posted it and who writes native level English. I can’t discount them completely, as it is possible to be both a native speaker of Italian and of English; but such people are rare, so I’d say that at least casts doubt on them. The other 2 results, I can’t access from Vietnam.
Meanwhile, what Gisella said has almost thirty thousand results. That’s 4 orders of magnitude more.
Clearly, both forms are used, and we all know that Italy is rich in dialects that influence the way people speak standard Italian; but unless I’m missing something (which admittedly is entirely possible knowing me), Gisella Albertini’s version seems to be far more common.
The other sentences in question got barely any hits for either version, which makes me wonder about whether either of them can be natural. For example:
“non sono sicuro come dire quello che intendo” zero results
“non sono sicuro di come dire quello che intendo” one result
Even if I make it less specific by not finishing the sentence, I get:
“non sono sicuro come dire” 3 results
“non sono sicuro di come dire” 5 results
Maybe neither version of this sentence is natural?
“Non sono sicuro/a” is just not as widely used in Italian as it is in English. You’d be understood, but it wouldn’t usually be your pattern of choice everywhere it would be in English. They sound a little clunky but not wrong, so nothing to worry about - you adapt to whatever you hear most anyway. You’re more likely to hear “non sono sicuro” on its own I think. And on top of that “non sono sicuro come si dice” sounds a bit more normal than “come dire”, to me anyway. But it’s important to practice the patterns with other patterns so they stick in your head, and these are not wrong, so that’s why they’re in there
Anyway, what I searched for was “non sono sicuro cosa” and found some examples from Italian forums using the same pattern, in case that helps reassure you! The “di” versions are what Google translate gives, so those results are also full of machine translated reddit threads and other pages which include “I’m not sure what will happen” in the original English, from what I saw 
just pointing out that the numbers can’t be compared so easily… I don’t deny there are more results with “di” either way!
However as I mentioned, I’ve checked with both my parents (one Italian monolingual and the other passes as a native speaker) and they say the way it’s in the course sounds OK - they both mentioned the “non sono sicuro” being a bit clunky, and didn’t say anything about “di” until I asked about that specifically. They explained that to them, adding “di” makes it sound a bit more formal, which is why I never got used to “di” as a child I guess!
I don’t mind one way or the other honestly - but at the moment it’s less work to keep it as it is (the reason it was chosen was that it made building the phrases easier, so it would need more work than just changing one set of texts!) and we’re not aiming for perfection, so as it’s not clearly wrong it’s not going on my fix list right now 
and hopefully I’ve helped reassure people it’s valid spoken Italian, and if anyone complains you can tell them you learned it from an Italian speaker who does say it that way 
Edit - I swear I haven’t been writing this all evening, I was just waiting for my dad to be free to talk some more before posting
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Oh, robo-Aran was just too volatile unfortunately, sorry! Real human Aran is going to be recording some new encouragements soon, which will sound a lot better than what’s in the app currently, if that’s any consolation!
Yes, I think that’s really the main point here, more than using or not using the “di”.
@martin-harte
I guess as first language speakers in informal communication, we naturally tend to choose the path of the least effort.
in English, you might even go with “not sure (what/how)'” 3 syllables, quick and easy!
In Italian, the shortcut could be using a quite different expression:
“non so bene (cosa/come)”
But that doesn’t really match the English, so if you have to make it work in a system with an English prompt, needing to shuffle bits of sentences around, and mainly for people who think English first, that may be tricky.
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But Kai, even with the specific example you searched for, the numbers tell a different story:
That’s just over 34,000 verus almost 2 million.
As a learner, I strongly disagree with how you’re looking at this. You’ve got one native speaker (your father) saying that both sound correct but that the version with “di” sounds formal and you’ve got another native speaker (@gisella-albertini) saying that the version without “di” sounds wrong. As a learner, if there’s an option to learn something that sounds wrong to some natives or something that doesn’t sound wrong to any native AFAWK, it’s a pretty big deal to me if you are choosing to implement the former in your course.
I’m not disputing that some natives use your form and consider it correct; but that’s hardly what matters to a learner when one chooses to trust your course.
I teach English as a second language. I’m a native speaker of English, but there are features of my speech (like most people in Britain) that reflect the dialect in some of the places I grew up. To take just one example, standard British English has phrases like: “The car needs washing.” That sounds weird to me and I never say that in daily life. I would say, “The car needs washed.” That’s what I grew up hearing. It turns out, though, that the way I say it is not standard.
What do I teach my students? The standard version. Because they don’t face the same situation as me. If I use the non-standard version with, say, an American, they don’t think I made a mistake. They think, “Oh, is that how you say it where you’re from? How cute.” I’ve had loads of these conversations BTW. However, if one of my students says the same thing to an American, it’s going to seem like a mistake. It’s the same for you as a heritage speaker and your father as a native speaker: Italians aren’t going to draw the same conclusions with you or your father as with me, a beginner learning Italian as an adult.
Yes, I know, to many people, mistakes don’t matter and that’s a totally valid point of view; but to some of us, there’s a difference between making a mistake and systematically learning a form that some (many?) natives consider a mistake. I mean this form has been drilled literally dozens of times already.
I really hope you will reconsider. This kind of thing is not a dealbreaker for me with Italian or Japanese (I’m not aiming for any particularly high level with them); but it’s exactly why I’m sadly missing out on your Mandarin course. Which is a real shame, as I could really use an SSi course in Mandarin. Kai, don’t misunderstand my tone due to the limitations of the medium: it’s meant to be pleading rather than chiding. It’s not my intention to scold you here, as I am genuinely grateful for the hard work you put into improving this course and I think you deserve a lot of praise for the job you have done. The new course is a massive improvement.
Speaking of hard work and also of errors, @Deborah-SSi, I took a brief look at your new Mandarin course. I don’t know if it contains errors. as my level is too low to be any judge; but I didn’t notice any in the time I spent. Even with my low level, I immediately found multiple errors in the old course, so this new one is clearly a big improvement and I can see how much work must have gone into that.
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Perché usiamo “sto provando” non “sto cercando di” adesso?
Why has the new app switched to using “sto provando” rather than “sto cercando di” ?
@Kai I’m still using both Italian courses (the old and the new) and the old course is significantly better now than it was when I did it a year a go and the new course is a massive upgrade again on top of that. The amount of work that must have gone into that is massive. I might not always agree with your decisions, but even I can see you deserve genuine kudos for that.
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Hi @martin-harte! Sorry, I haven’t been ignoring you on purpose, just forgot to check back in!
I absolutely get where you’re coming from, I’m not actually fighting to keep the non-“di” version just because it sounds more normal to me - I’m only saying that I don’t think it’s significant enough to warrant a new release when we could be focusing on more languages (this is my internal Aran voice speaking to me) 
We’re hoping to launch a community tool for suggesting tweaks and flagging bad audio and stuff soon, to me this seems like the perfect candidate… But that too is waiting behind some new courses being released, sorry!
and I do believe (based on learning from Aran and my own experience) that no matter how much it’s drilled here, your brain will very quickly adapt to what you hear in the outside world (speaking to people, podcasts, films) and you’ll start using it the way you hear other people say it. It almost feels like it treats the course as one context (no matter how many hours you do) and as soon as you hear things in different ways in other contexts, it notices and course-corrects. As long as you’re proficient enough to notice the differences anyway. If that’s any comfort…
Thank you for the kind words about the courses - I will pass them on to Deborah and Tom who I feel did most of the relevant work 
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