arrivederci, fed04.17

Se oggi la situazione è complessa, non c’è ragione di credere che invece fosse semplice nel passato.

So why Italian? Sure it’s a beautiful language but isn’t Mandarin (Arabic, French, or even German) more widely spoken and, therefore, more useful?

In my book, the beauty of Italian trumps the perceived usefulness of German. But, if it’s not enough, there are many more reasons to learn this language and its history. Look no further than this fantastic MOOC (or its little sister) to discover, indeed, why Italian. By a telling coincidence, I finished this course yesterday, just as Italy defeated England in the Euro 2020 finals.

L’italiano nel mondo is a complete opposite of Italian Language and Culture. No unconvincing skits with pretend students. No silly examples that nobody ever uses. And no English spoken whatsoever. This ten-week course is offered by Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (FedericaX) and presented by Nicola De Blasi, professor of Italian linguistics at the said university. Here’s the syllabus:

Lezione 1 — Italiano lingua internazionale Lezione 2 — Italiano nel cinema e nel teatro Lezione 3 — Italiano nel mondo contemporaneo Lezione 4 — Geografia dell’italiano Lezione 5 — Le origini dell’italiano Midterm Exam Lezione 6 — L’italiano ai tempi di Dante e di San Francesco Lezione 7 — L’italiano nuova lingua di cultura Lezione 8 — Italiano e dialetti Lezione 9 — Le innovazioni dell’italiano Lezione 10 — La continuità dell’italiano Final exam

Each lesson contains two short-ish (7—8 minutes) videolectures, each followed by a reading, and, starting from Lesson 3, very simple self-evaluation. For those who do this course “for real”, there are also midterm exam and final exam; not for freeloaders like me though.

The videolectures feature little more than a “talking head” of Prof. De Blasi. Most of the time, he is sitting in the nice surroundings, usually with bookshelves behind him, and uses no other props than (physical) books when he is talking. Kind of old school; I like it. (I also would like, one day, sit at the table like that, on my own, and lecture to the world; or maybe just sit at the table like that. Never mind.)

Curiously, up to the Week 6 all the videos have both Italian and English subtitles. Starting the Week 6, English subtitles have disappeared. Not that I needed them too much: I found that I understand about 70% of what De Blasi says without them, and then there is Italian transcript that I can use. Still, I duly informed the course staff about that and got a prompt response:

Hello,

thank you for your feedback. We try to make every course available in other languages as well, but this one is completely in Italian and we are working on the English translation that we hope we'll put up as soon as possible. Meanwhile you can find a shorter version in English at this link: https://www.edx.org/course/italian-language-around-the-world

Happy learning,

FedericaX Team

I followed the link and discovered that Italian Language around the world is a five-week course which, most likely, just uses the videos of the first five weeks of L’italiano nel mondo. Oh well.

The readings, also in Italian of course, build on the lectures and provide the visual support that, one may feel, is missing from the videos. For example:

The language, academic it may seem, is easy enough to understand. And if not, Google Translate is doing a decent job, apart from the moments where some examples of mediaeval Italian are given. On more than one occasion, Google Translate helpfully suggested to switch to Corsican.

staying indoors all night working

From Soul Music by Terry Pratchett:

A new day dawned.
It had hardly finished doing so before Ridcully hurried through the dewy grass of the University gardens and hammered on the door of the High Energy Magic Building.

The door opened.
‘Oh, it’s you, Archchancellor.’
Ridcully pushed the door open further.
‘Morning, Stibbons. Glad to see you’re up and about early.’
Ponder Stibbons, the faculty’s youngest member, blinked at the sky.
‘Is it morning already?’ he said.

‘You ain’t been out lately?’ said Ridcully.
‘No, sir. Er. Should I have been? I’ve been busy working on my Make‑It‑Bigger device. You know, I showed you—’
‘Right, right,’ said Ridcully, looking around. ‘Anyone else been working in here?’
‘Well . . . there’s me, and Tez the Terrible and Skazz and Big Mad Drongo, I think . . .’
Ridcully blinked.
‘What are they?’ he said. And then, from the depths of memory, a horrible answer suggested itself. Only a very specific species had names like that.
‘Students?’
‘Er. Yes?’ said Ponder, backing away. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, this is a university . . .’
Ridcully scratched his ear. The man was right, of course. You had to have some of the buggers around, there was no getting away from it. Personally, he avoided them whenever possible, as did the rest of the faculty, occasionally running the other way or hiding behind doors whenever they saw them. The Lecturer in Recent Runes had been known to lock himself in his wardrobe rather than take a tutorial.

He stared at the students. It was a worrying sight, and not just because of the natural look of students. Here were some people who, while this damn music was making everyone tap their feet, had stayed indoors all night — working.

adios, CopyrightX

To my great surprise, my review of 3.091x course became the most popular post of all time on this blog. That is to say, more than 365 pageviews. I know, it’s peanuts, but then I never expected this blog to be much visited in the first place. Let’s see if my 100th post (!) will be a hit.

HLS1x Copyright, aka CopyrightX, was the second edX course I took. Apart from the fact that these are both edX courses, there is very little in common between CopyrightX and 3.091x. I intend to continue with edX next academic year and look forward to surprises. Yet I dare to suggest that there is very little in common between CopyrightX and any other edX course.

To start with, one cannot simply, single-clickingly (is there such a word?) register for CopyrightX, like for any old edX course. No sir, you have to apply. This year class was limited to 500 participants. Mmm, I thought, intriguing. I just had to apply and see what happens next.