From London to Roma: How Olympic Volleyball sparked my interest in learning Italian

It all started when I chanced upon a video on the YouTube channel of the 2012 London Olympics. It was a full replay of the Quarterfinals match between Brazil and Russia in Women’s Volleyball. I remember watching this action-packed match between these two volleyball powerhouses last year. As I was waiting for it to buffer, I noticed that all other Olympic matches were available! I was only able to watch a couple other Olympic volleyball matches last year and so I downloaded all the other matches to queue them on my watch list.

I began with the quarterfinal matches in the Men’s Volleyball: Brazil versus Argentina, Poland versus Russia, Bulgaria versus Germany and Italy versus USA. I knew no one from these volleyball superstars but I quickly got acquainted as I googled the star players as I watched their matches. Apparently, they’re called FIVB Heroes now. (Yeah, it’s an official “title”!)

FIVB Heroes. Cristian Savani (ITA), Tsvetan Sokolov (BUL)
and Dmitriy Muserskiy (RUS). 

I realized I really miss watching and following volleyball games. In fact, I really miss watching and following all the sports I used to watch and follow back when I was in high school and cable sports channels were so accessible. Anyway, I would watch the matches in sheer awe and I was an instant fan of these players.

During timeouts, the coverage would tune in to the conversations between the coaches and his players as they try to steal or keep the momentum of the game. Among the 8 quarterfinalists, only the USA was an English-speaking country and so, more often than not, I wouldn’t really understand what the coaches were instructing their players. I would often just rely on the British voice-over who would analyze the game for the viewers. Oh, how I wished I spoke these foreign languages! Then maybe, I would understand the players. Somehow, I know I would feel more instantly “connected” to my new sports idols (language really does that, no?). I’ve always had a special fascination for the European culture anyway – the countries, places, cuisines, languages and their accents! Haha!

I was already watching my fourth game (Italy versus USA) when an idea suddenly crossed my mind. So obviously, the Americans were speaking English during timeouts while the Italians were speaking well, Italian. By then, I was rooting for the Italians because aside from the fact that they were playing much better volleyball, they seemed to be quite enjoying the game more. But then again, what lower-ranked team wouldn’t be when you’re about to score a major upset against the preliminaries leader and two-time defending Olympic champion? They would shout stuff whenever they’d score great plays. Quite audible as they were, I was still always left wondering because I didn’t really understand what they were saying (and this holds true in the three other games I’ve watched before this one).

And so I googled how to learn Italian! Haha!

I remember trying to learn Spanish many years ago by downloading some Pimsleur audio books. I quickly lost interest back then because listening to the audio books required dedicated attention to really absorb the lessons. Also, one had to recite phrases loudly in order to progress. I simply can’t do that with all the ruckus at home and I surely cannot be a nuisance to my two roommates.

One of the Google search results was a Wiki Answers entry. Someone posted a question on the best and quickest way to learn Italian. One answer had many likes and comments that vouched for it. It said to try via Duolingo.

Duolingo is a free education app that both available on iOS and Android. You can learn more about it by checking it out here. I tried it out (hey, it’s free after all!) and I must say, I quickly enjoyed it.

What I like about it the most are its “gamified” skill tree format and the earning of “skill points” as I progress. Its skill tree is like a very structured and wisely organized lesson plan and so I am not easily overwhelmed with all the new words I am learning. Its skill points feature allows me to monitor my progress and even “compete” with friends. Its questions in every mini-game are in different formats (multiple choice, listen and type in Italian, translate to and from Italian) and so learning doesn’t swiftly get repetitive. Remember back in Elementary when our teachers would occasionally have games in order to spice up the boring lesson sessions? It made learning much more fun, right? Well, in Duolingo, imagine always having a game day.

In its current version, there are five languages to choose from for us English speakers: Italian, Spanish, German, Portuguese and French. I thought of learning Spanish just like before because of its close proximity to our culture, history and our language. I also thought of learning French because after all, it’s touted as the most romantic language and I find speaking French more sophisticated. But I finally settled into choosing Italian first for the primary reason that I love Italian food. Technically, none of these languages will serve useful for me because none of them are relevant to my work or personal life. But if I were to visit any of these countries someday, Italy would be at the top of my list. Plus, for the meantime, learning Italian would mean I will not have a hard time in reading the menu of the fancy Italian restaurants here at The Fort. Haha!

And so, I’ve been learning Italian on Duolingo for about two weeks now and below is my progress so far.

It isn’t much for now and it’s not like I can already converse with a native Italian speaker with confidence. Not unless the only thing we’ll talk about is how I am the man (io sono l’uomo) or that I eat strawberry cake (mangio la torta al fragola). Haha! Obviously, I need to build on my vocabulary. But I find it amusing that this early, I already have a good grasp of the language – as far as simple and present tense sentences are concerned, that is. I didn’t expect to know and understand this much if I were attending a traditional language class in the same number of hours I’ve spent playing and learning on the app.

I have a long way to go, really, but I look forward to speaking and writing in Italian fluently. I find myself quite motivated because this would be my 4th language and I've always admired people who spoke fluently in many languages. (And God knows I need another to admire myself, hahaha).

If I were to watch another volleyball game featuring the Italian national team, I probably still wouldn’t understand them (it’s not like they will talk about food and animals). But fingers crossed, if Miss Italy reaches the Final Question round, I will catch bits and pieces of her motherhood statements. Haha!