italian phonology

Summary

Italian-Flashcards.com is a fast-loading, useful site for Italian learners to manage and practice vocabulary lists (words and sentences). There are many existing word and sentence lists created by other users that you can snag and use right away. You can also create your own lists and sentences on-the-fly and test yourself until you know them all. As a result, this resource works for Italian students of all levels, beginner to advanced. The self-testing is done via built-in flashcard software that you control.

The website has an integrated dictionary that gives explanations of individual terms and includes examples of how these are used in real sentences. In addition, when you view a sentence, you can scroll over the Italian words and view annotations. NB: You can copy and paste any Italian text you want into the site's Text Analyzer and it provides you with what you see below (see grey scroll-over pop-up in image for annotation). Words that are not in the system with be displayed in grey, such as the word "Mike" below.

Something you might find useful is the site's Sentence of the Day email. This sends a different sentence every day complete with a translation of the sentence.

If you upgrade to a premuim membership (~$5/month) you can also hear audio for the sentence. In fact, the only thing you cannot do without a membership is hear the audio on the site.

Bravo Oliver for this excellent site and keep up the great work!

From Website

Introduction

Our first flashcard website started in 2005. A lot of time has been invested to design an efficient system which enables you to learn new words in the shortest time possible. Make sure to read this introduction carefully so you understand how the system works. Once you know how this website works and you use it regularly it will become an important tool to learn Italian. Ideally make time each day for 2 or 3 sessions a day, each lasting about 10 - 15 minutes.

Once you have created your own account you can set up your own word list. There are basically two different modes on how to add new words to your word list. One is automatically and one is manually.

Automatically

If you choose "automatically" then the system will choose random words for you to practice. Within the Auto-Mode there are two different choices. The first is "completely random words" and the second is "frequent words first". Obviously if you are a beginner you should focus on those frequent words first, so if you chose the level "Complete Newbie", "Basic" or "Intermediate" the system will just do that. If you chose the level "Upper Intermediate" or "Advanced" completely random words will be added to your word list.

Manually

If you would like more control over which word you learn switch to the manually mode. In this mode you have to choose which word you will learn, not the system. There are a few ways to add words manually. The first is to use the search function in the navigation bar on the left-hand side. You can search for Italian or English words. On the result page every found word has an "Add Word" link next to it. Click it to add this word to your personal list. After you click it the link text will change to "Remove Word", so you can immediately remove the word from your list if you have added it by mistake.

The second way to add words manually is to click the link "Add new Words" in the navigation. This will show random words for you to add. They are sorted by frequency, the most common words will be at the top of this random list, while the rare words will be at the bottom of the list.

Finally you can add words manually by browsing through the "public word lists". These lists have been created by other users. These public lists normally have a common theme, like "animals", "computer terms", "fruits", etc. You can either pick some words of these public lists or copy the whole list.

You can also combine these methods, add words automatically but also occasionally add words manually.

Adding words automatically is the default setting. If you do not want to add words automatically you can change this in the settings.

The Loop

The main problem of learning new words is that over time word lists grow very big. This means that the learner feels overwhelmed and the time between word repetitions becomes too long. Thats where the Loop comes to the rescue.

The Loop consists of a subset of only 20 words out of your word list. This means you can concentrate on a few words only, until you have memorized them properly. To keep a flashcard in the loop click on the "Loop" button.

If you have become familiar with a new word which is in the Loop click on "1 day", "7 days", "30 days" etc. Which means that the word will be shown only after the indicated time has passed. If you know a word very well click on "30 Days" or "3 Months" so the word will be shown only after a long time. After the indicated time has passed the word will be put into the Queue.

Once you remove a word from the Loop another one will be put in the Loop. The system will first check if there are any words in the "Queue". If the Queue is empty and you are in Auto-Mode the system will choose a new word for you and add it to your word list and into the Loop. If you are in the "manual mode" the system will tell you that you need to add more words in order to continue.

If you click "Remove Word" then the word will be removed from your word list. "Permanently Block" will do the same except that it will also prevent the word from coming back in the "Automatic Mode" where the system chooses words for you. By default there are 20 words in the loop. You can change the number of words in the loop in the settings.

Word Lists

If the Loop system sounds too complicated to you, then you can also set up simple word lists. To do this click on "[Manage Lists]" in the navigation. Then click on "[Add List]" to create a new list. If you want to share this word list with other users select the box "Public List". If you want to immediately add new words to this list select "Also Activate". You can create as many lists as you want. In the navigation bar you can always see which list is active at the moment. Words will be added to the currently active list. To go back to the master list (which uses the loop), click on "[Manage Lists]" and the "[Leave List Mode]".

Visit Italian-Flashcards.com

Summary

If you don't know about Wikipedia, now is the time to find out! Especially since it is so useful in learning languages.

Wikipedia is the "Free Encyclopedia", a collectively-authored, dynamic, online encyclopedia that is free not only as in price, but also as in freedom. This means that the content you find anywhere on Wikipedia is free and open in the Public Domain. You can reproduce, redistribute and rehash the information there. This is empowered by the GNU Free Documentation License. This same license protects and empowers the contant on Free Language! (How?)

This particular resource links to the Wikipedia entry on the Italian language. This entry contains loads of information for the curious reader as well as for the serious Italian language learner, including historical and linguistic data.

Use this resource to become familiar with the Italian language and its context in today's world, to discover facts and linguistic data about Italian and its many varieties, access further information about and resources for learning Italian, and much more.

From Resource

Italian (italiano or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino. Standard Italian, adopted by the state after the unification of Italy, is based on Tuscan dialect and is somewhat intermediate between Italo-Dalmatian languages of the South and Northern Italian dialects of the North.

Unlike most other Romance languages, Italian has retained the contrast between short and long consonants which existed in Latin. As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive. Of the Romance languages, Italian is considered to be one of the closest resembling Latin in terms of vocabulary, though Romanian most closely preserves the noun declension system of Classical Latin, and Spanish the verb conjugation system (see Old Latin), while Sardinian is the most conservative in terms of phonology.

The history of the Italian language is long, but the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. The earliest surviving texts which can definitely be called Italian (as opposed to its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae from the region of Benevento dating from 960-963. Italian was first formalized in the first years of the 14th century through the works of Dante Alighieri, who mixed southern Italian languages, especially Sicilian, with his native Tuscan in his epic poems known collectively as the Commedia, to which Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed the title Divina. Dante's much-loved works were read throughout Italy and his written dialect became the "canonical standard" that others could all understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language and, thus, the dialect of Tuscany became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy.

Italian has always had a distinctive dialect for each city, since the cities were until recently thought of as city-states. The most characteristic differences, for instance, between Roman Italian and Milanese Italian are the gemination of initial consonants and the pronunciation of stressed "e" and "s" in some cases (e.g. va bene "all right": is pronounced [va ˈbbɛne] by a Roman, [va ˈbene] by a Milanese; a casa "at home": Roman [a ˈkkasa], Milanese [a ˈkaza]).

In contrast to the dialects of northern Italy, the older southern Italian dialects were largely untouched by the Franco-Occitan influences introduced to Italy, mainly by bards from France, during the Middle Ages. (See La Spezia-Rimini Line.) The economic might and relative advanced development of Tuscany at the time (Late Middle Ages), gave its dialect weight, though Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life. Also, the increasing cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of 'Umanesimo (Humanism)' and the Rinascimento (Renaissance) made its volgare (dialect), or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts. The re-discovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia and a renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century sparked a debate which raged throughout Italy concerning which criteria should be chosen to establish a modern Italian standard to be used as much as a literary as a spoken language. Scholars were divided into three factions: the purists, headed by Pietro Bembo who in his Gli Asolani claimed that the language might only be based on the great literary classics (notably, Petrarch, and Boccaccio but not Dante as Bembo believed that the Divine Comedy was not dignified enough as it used elements from other dialects), Niccolò Machiavelli and other Florentines who preferred the version spoken by ordinary people in their own times, and the Courtesans like Baldassarre Castiglione and Gian Giorgio Trissino who insisted that each local vernacular must contribute to the new standard. Eventually Bembo's ideas prevailed, the result being the publication of the first Italian dictionary in 1612 and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca.
Italian literature's first modern novel, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), by Alessandro Manzoni further defined the standard by "rinsing" his Milanese 'in the waters of the Arno" (Florence's river), as he states in the Preface to his 1840 edition.

After unification a huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home dialects ("ciao" is Venetian, "panettone" is Milanese etc.).

Link

Visit "Italian Language" on Wikipedia.

License

GNU Free Documentation License