possession and sweden

Ciao :~) Da quanto tempo (long time no see)!

My weekend has been spent perfecting things and rehearsing (a lot) for my TED Talk, along with some other assignments that I may or may not have been putting off for a bit. 

In totally unrelated news I got this bag as a birthday present (!!!!) from a company called Fjällräven in Sweden that makes these really really nice backpacks and I'm totally in love with it and I want to order ten more in various colors - the only minor limitation being that they cost around $75+ each. It's been the highlight of my weekend.

I'm trying desperately to hold back from learning Swedish instead of Italian not gonna lie

Anyway, I've been spending my week focusing on the possessive case in Italian, which entails a lot of adjectives and pronouns that are daunting to say the least. I've been using some YouTube videos and online resources to help me - I'm going to bring up my man TomTxxytu again with his super helpful video on possessive articles:

Possessive adjectives basically use definite articles in front of the adjective - "il mio professore" would literally translate to "the my professor", or you can think about it as "the professor of mine". This can make it more than a little bit confusing since the articles and the adjective must agree both in number and gender.

possibly the most helpful guide i've found so far

I've definitely found it easier to communicate with Sara as time goes on; with the internet, I can look up new vocabulary any time I want to mention something new or don't know how to say something in Italian. This is not a preferred method of learning, but one that works until I am able to memorize the vocabulary I use most often.

On that note, I've been doing a bit more research on different language learning methods and I found a website called Memrise which is a site that so many people swear by for picking up new vocabulary. It's said that memorizing the 1,000 most common words in any language will help form connections, giving you a sort of scaffolding to help as you learn more and more vocabulary. 

Memrise has special sets of vocabulary that focuses on just the 1,000 most common words in several languages, and has a unique way of incorporating gaming and typing and speaking into a cohesive format that's very intuitive to use.

Obviously, this is not going to get me speaking fluently anytime soon, but as I continue to progress with my learning I'm trying to incorporate Memrise into my routine of Duolingo, videos, and book learning. I try my best to mix it up :~) 

I really really am beginning to love this project.

Ciao,

Sarah