Growing Up Italian American and Bilingual.

Growing up Italian American has its privileges. We are brought up with an intense passion for life, which includes cooking, family, education and culture. With culture comes language, while growing up my parents struggled to speak their new language, which was English.

Both native Italians were forced to learn English while trying to survive in America. My parents learned English through conversation and just everyday interaction with Americans. My father was too busy trying to make a living to take classes or indulge in any English form of education. My mother on the hand, was home raising four children while speaking only Italian and trying to help my siblings and myself do homework in English. Needless to say, my sister was the eldest and went to kindergarten speaking Italian. English at that moment was her second language.

My mother who was the more active involved parent when it came to school had to adjust to speaking to our teachers and understanding what the American curriculum was and how her children had to learn the English language. I give my mother a ton of credit because she absolutely never acted scared or inferior when trying to learn English. Instead, she had such a great interest in learning English, that I almost feel like she learned English through our Language Arts in school. My mother is now enrolled in college and is about a semester away from receiving her Bachelor's degree. What an amazing accomplishment coming from a moment when she didn't know any English.

As the years progressed in the education system for myself and siblings, we all had a great strength in succeeding in Language Arts. For some reason, English was our strong subject, even though at home we spoke Italian and English. Actually, we spoke 'dialect' plus English, so it was an actual combined language. There was no separation of these tongues. Then, as we would often visit our family in Italy, you were then put in another situation where you were speaking proper Italian, then dialect, then English.

The strengths about being bilingual speak for themselves. As I travel to Italy often and other parts of the world, I feel fortunate to be able to have another outlet of communication. I also feel that my upbringing in the Italian culture and education in the Italian language also add value to my credibility and career when applying or interacting in the professional world. Being bilingual is a wonderful asset to own and if any parent has an opportunity to educate their child or if the parent wants to learn another language as well, it can only help not hurt. Its an asset to own in these modern times.

Here is a great article outlining the benefits of raising bilingual children:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j5-F8j-yYdLNUrlLhObAy0vbd4SgD99IBQS00 Tweet

Award Winning Author, Dianne Hales, Writes An Amazing New Book About the Italian Language, "La Bella Lingua."

Award winning author, Dianne Hales has written one of the most beautiful and informative books I've read in a long time about the Italian language. Dianne, fell in love in Italy while vacationing there and was quickly captivated by the Italian language and its cultural history.

Dianne is a seasoned author with many successful books and articles in top publications in the country. When Dianne returned from Italy, she was determined to find, learn and expand her own knowledge about the Italian language, which led her to write her most recent book, "La Bella Lingua."

What I find personally so fascinating is that a non-Italian becomes so engrossed with the Italian culture and feels the incredible need to educate themselves on the language, traditions and culture. I am always so proud of the Italophile community.

As you dive deeper into the "La Bella Lingua" you not only learn about how Dianne came to understand the Italian language but how her dedicated research and love for the Italian culture played an important role in the way the book was written, researched and organized. To further add credibility, Dianne traveled and visited with top Italian academic institutions and experts to learn the true history behind the Italian language and its culture.

For me, I always find the "dialects" most interesting, and I actually learned in this book about the different dialects and words for simple things like, "child." What I know as a Calabrese, someone in Venice says differently, of course when we're all speaking informally, but when we're out in public, we speak our poetic and proper Italian language.

"La Bella Lingua" is a wonderful, educational read for anyone interested in learning more about Italy and its rich history behind the most sought after and romantic language in the world. Personally, I would buy this book for anyone traveling to Italy, its beautiful, well written and inspires you to learn, speak and understand the Italian language and culture.

You can buy "La Bella Lingua" on Amazon. : http://tinyurl.com/pyvcqy

Check out Dianne Hale's Site http://www.becomingitalian.com/ where she talks about her journey to learning and experiencing the Italian culture.

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Ferrari Funding Study Grants For An International Educational Competition.

Ferrari announced they will be funding research grants for young international students and graduates enrolled in a competition revolving around Engineering, Physics, Architecture and Human Factors. The competition will be based largely around innovation.

The competition is set to last for 12 months with a final research project as the submission,which will address several scientific issues. Kudos to Ferrari for their educational efforts and supporting our youth.

Read more here: Ferrari Tweet

AP Italian Language Courses Being Cut From Schools.

Just when we thought we had made progress in keeping and maintaining language courses in schools, it turns out with unsecured funds, the College Board has decided to cut the Italian language programs. It appears the Italian Language Foundation was able to raise substantial amounts of money but was unable to come up with the balance, due to I'm sure political red tape. What else? This news is just unacceptable. So many prominent Italian Americans spend or should I say waste money on "donations" or "charity" (because they think they're donating to a worthy cause) then the money is somehow squandered into these "faux" organizations and now the language board can't come up with funds to satisfy the balance...? Ridiculous. There is I am sure more to the story, but from where I'm sitting, sounds like a bunch of you know what.

Get the full story here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/07/AR2009010703693.html Tweet

Parliamo---Want To Learn How To Speak Italian?

If you're interested in learning on how to speak Italian, there are so many options available to us. If you're the type of person that prefers to learn it privately without group or school settings, then I suggest you hit your local library and ask the librarian for Italian language DVDs, audio and books. I actually came across a bunch of it the other day in my library. I was going to take a book out just to brush up on my grammar.

Another option--there are tons of local meeting groups that get together once a month to talk about Italy and just learn the basics on language. This is sponsored by Meetup.com -- I'm also a fan of checking in with my local colleges and universities, where they offer continuing adult education at night. Its inexpensive and usually runs about a couple of weeks or half of semester. My personal opinion, you never really truly understand the language until you actually are in conversation, so maybe going to a language class is best where you can interact. Good Luck!

http://italian.meetup.com/ Tweet