I got inspired by Lydia Davis’ language learning process.
Although she learned German by immersion, Davis’s preferred method of language acquisition is quite different, and, to an outside observer, demonically challenging: She finds a book published in a language that she does not fully or even partially understand and then tries to figure out what it means.
To improve her Spanish, she digs into a copy of “Las Aventuras de Tom Sawyer.” In some cases the decryption proves easy. Words like “plan” are the same in English and Spanish. In other cases she inductively reasons the meaning of a word after noticing it in different contexts. Hoja initially stumps her when it pops up in the phrase hoja de papel — “hoja of paper.” Later in the book, it occurs in the context of a tree. Finally, Huck wraps a dry hoja around something to make a cigarette, and Davis realizes that only one meaning would work as well with paper as with a tree or a cigarette: “leaf.” Of course, it would be possible to solve the hoja enigma in two seconds by plugging the word into Google, but that would destroy the fun.
Basically she takes a book in a foreign language and translates it without a dictionary. Sounds crazy? Maybe, but not if you’re a language nerd like me. I really found a kindred spirit when I read that quote. I’ve always been fascinated by languages so now I want to see what happens if I take this approach myself.
The language I chose is Italian, I used to study it in a university in Kyiv (my dream back then was to become a teacher of Italian and English). But it’s been a long time ago and I haven’t practiced any Italian since. Well, besides listening to Italian songs and occasionally rewatching a few of my favourite Adriano Celentano movies.
I expect this experiment to take a long time but I feel excited about it. The book that I chose is “La solitudine dei numeri primi” by Paolo Giordano.
I’m guessing that my level of Italian is about A2 (it was probably B2 in my university days). I can still understand a lot of what is said but there isn’t much in my active vocabulary. So every time I tried speaking it, the Swedish words came out which sounded really funny.