Italy with Kids - Learning Italian

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Keen to take that first step in becoming fluent in another language, I at first tracked down the Rosetta Stone. This software program is absolutely brilliant for leaning a new language. However, I spend over an hour and a half driving to and from work each day, so wanted to find podcasts or audio lessons.

I came across two podcasts:
LearnItalianPod and Inside Italian. Inside Italian seems to have stopped renewing its content, but is still worthwhile having a listen to.
LearnItalianPod is brilliant! (and free!) They have an extensive range of free podcasts dealing at all levels of Italian, in each case focusing on a particular subject. Massimo and Jane also have a quirky sense of humour and I enjoy the way Massimo squeezes in his spiel on becoming a subscriber into the middle of the conversation with Jane. Massimo, I will! Upon my return I intend to subscribe to the full version.

Lonely Planet's Italian Phrasebook. My wife has already found her favourite question: “Posso pagare con la carta di credito?. If you want a translation, copy and paste the sentence into Alta Vista's Babel Fish .

I recommend using Babel Fish for online researching of those sites that don't deal in English. To their credit, most of the Italian sites dealing with tourists did offer well written english versions.

Italian For Children (Book & CD) (Language for Children Series) . This set of 3 audio CDs comes with a workbook. Over the space of a few months I listened to it with our boys, enough for them to be comfortable with the basics: counting, colours, their favourite food “cioccolato”, and how to say “What is your name?”. The audio does have a bias to liking school, and there is even a song on “Mi piace la scuola”, which I'm not sure all kids would agree with , but otherwise it is very well organised and easy to follow.

Arrivederci

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