Word for the Travel Wise (01/30/06)

11 days left before the Winter Olympics really begin to cook things up in chilly Turin which means it’s time for us to brush up on our Italian. Wouldn’t you agree? Many of us will probably tune in via our local cable station where our poor language skills will be forgiven, but for those making the journey abroad don’t just stand there – say something!

Today’s word is an Italian word used in Italy:

qualcosa – something

If you forget every other basic word in the book you can always count on saying something and something is often better than nothing. Depending on who or how you say the word my guess is you’ll either earn some slight laughter or a swift smack across the face. Not to say that this is even close to being foul or dirty, but let’s mind our manners. Besides the world may not be ready for your dry sense of humor.

Italian is yet another Romance lang spoken by some 70 million people primarily in Italy. Beautiful indeed. Seeing how popular the language is there isn’t much difficulty finding learning resources on the web.%uFFFD I’m a little unsure about what’s going on with this June29 site, but they have three very simple lessons to get your learning motors going. You might find the BBC your one stop shop in handling your needs. Dictionaries, lessons, audio, and slang are all included. Distance learning is always recommended in my book. Check out some of these programs abroad where you can study in various cities across the country and even Lugano, Switzerland. A few links to study abroad are as follows: Amerispan, World Link Education, and ILUSS. Head over to this Italian Book Store for suggested text.