language

The long drives to work and back ought to be good for something other than tolerating the companion news programs that our local NPR affiliate broadcasts after "Morning Edition" or "All Things Considered."

So now I play tapes to aid me in learning Italian.

My mouth muscles are programmed to speak English syllables. My poor brain is not very bright at grasping the grammer and idioms of other languages.

My track record at learning other languages is not very good. There was the 9th grade Spanish class. There were two years of German in college that took three years to complete.

Neither experience made me feel good about trying to learn another language.

But now I have a new attitude. Keep practicing in the car. Don't try to translate into English. Try to find meanings in the phrase. Work on pronunciation. Practice each day. Understand that the tongue and lips, so molded by English, might be freed up to roll my rrrs and let loose in the wavy accents of Italian. I am in a child-like state of learning Italian words, naming things. (And secretly I am astonished at how many German words come to mind as I try to remember what I've learned, not to mention a lifetime of picking up a little Spanish here and there).

I am having fun. No grades. No expectations.