Corrections · 5
How to not think in Italian
I'm studying English. Mostly I'm trying to improve my speaking and listening skills, but even in English I often think in Italian before speaking, so I speak English like I speak Italian.* Every time** that I speak to myself, in English of course, I understand that I'm thinking in Italian first, but I can't stop myself. Is it normal? Is there a way to not think in Italian first?ò
Thanks for any help
Giuseppe
* ( using Italian grammar and word order )
** Britney Spears notwithstanding, we normally write this as two words!
I think only reading and listening to native speaker English will really help you with this. When you have English phrases on the tip of your tongue, you will find you no longer have an Italian phrase there that you need to translate. But maybe you could think about some of the strange sounds and usages you hear in Italian when English native speakers try to speak it. Those sounds and usages are us doing something similar - thinking in English, then translating. So you want to mimic that "sound", that intonation that is distinctively English (and not Italian), and also those choices of tense, word order and usage which seem alien or funny in Italian, but which show you what English speakers thought of first. Those are the things which you want to think of first, when you are speaking in English. No more usages like starting with "Così ... " , or "Risposta non c'è ..."
How to don't think in italian
I'm studying English, mostly I'm trying to improve my speaking and listening skills, but while I'm speaking I often think in Italian before to speak in English, so I speak how I when speak Italian.Everytime that I speak to myself, in English of course, I understand that I'm thinking in Italian, but I can't to stop me. Is it normal? Is there a way to don't think before?
Thanks for any help
Giuseppe
Hi Giuseppe, your post is really understandable. However you need to use simple present instead of present continuous (you can Google the difference), and as for my feedback to your content I would say that you should think English when you speak English. Try not to relate one language with another because it will confuse you - grammarwise and vocabularywise. Growing up bilingual, I think that's all I could sum up so far. Hope that helps. The key to any language fluency is to keep practicing.
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