I’m sitting here late at night wondering what I’m still doing awake. Insomnia has hit me hard lately and I’ve been working through some health stuff.
This won’t be a depressing or woe is me type of post I promise!
I’ve recently started to think about what I want to teach Valeria as she grows up. In my last post I stated I was going to start creating books so she can learn all three languages: Italian, Romanian and English. That is still the plan, but as I was working on an idea last night, I came across something I never knew. In hindsight, I probably should have, but I will get to that in a moment.
I didn’t know that the Italian alphabet only contains 21 letters. So the letters J, K, W, X and Y aren’t used and if words contain those letters, then they are borrowed from a foreign language. Wild right?!
Now, let me get to the part as to why I didn’t know that. When I was a child, Nonna Santa (my mother’s mom) lived with us and she spoke to us in Italian pretty much always. With the occasional Italian/English mixed word, example: Backyarda….Not an actual word by the way. But you grew to understand. I could understand her and other Italians really well, still do to this day.
But, when I was young my mother put me in Italian school on Saturdays, the problem was I was struggling in English at school (later found out I had a learning disability – Dyslexia). My mother pulled me from Italian school (weirdly I flourished there) and had me focus on English.
I don’t disagree that my mother made the right choice. I mean we live in Canada, which is an English speaking country. It made sense for me, as a child with a learning disability, to focus on that as my primary language.
My one regret is that I didn’t decide to go back to Italian lessons as I was older. Now, I’m itching to learn! In a way this is good for both me and Valeria, we can kind of learn together. I am trying to learn Romanian, though that is a struggle. My tongue doesn’t move certain ways in which the words need to be pronounced. My husband corrects me when I try though. I can roll my tongue for R sounds all day long, but my goodness my tongue does not want to move for Romanian words!
I might find a class or something to begin learning Italian since I’m too scared to speaking the little that I know, well not scared but embarrassed. I don’t want to sound foolish or say something incorrectly. I also want to be able to read and write it comfortably. One day, I’d like to visit Italy and I want to be the fluent speaker out of our little family.
My husband has Romanian on lock, now it’s my turn.
Needless to say, I’m trying to figure out how to approach these books now. Do I want to do one for food? Do I want to do one for people? Animals? Simple phrases? Et cetera. I might jot down some ideas tomorrow.
If you have any suggestions let me know in the comments below!
Ciao!!
Mama on the Move 