Ciao all,
My name is Frank and I am a 36 year old fireman from Arizona. I would love to tour Italy on my Harley someday and I plan on moving to Italy when I retire. I could use some advise on how I can teach my son (10 months old) italian. I am currently trying to learn myself and neither of my parents speak. I have bought several Disney DVDs in italian off of EBAY.IT and I am waiting for my region free DVD player to get here in the mail. Also I would like to find someone in the region my family is from Rendi, Calabria to be like a penpal to learn more about my heritage. If anyone can help with ANY advise please write.

Grazie
Frank Palermo

Hi Frank and welcome to the forum.

Good for you for learning the language before you go to Italy - so many people from English speaking countries are very lazy when it comes to learning other languages; many arrogantly assume that everybody should speak English!

You could try the BBC languages website - it's a very good site with many interactive exercises which would certainly be a help in consolidating your learning of the language, particularly if you are learning alone. I'll post the link below.

Good luck and best wishes to you and your family!


http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/italian/

Hey Frank, I too am a new member of the community. I live here in the states as well and was curious about your comment regarding the "region free" DVD. Is this a special DVD player required for foreign language discs? Please enlighten me if you can as I am ready to get started with a language correspondance class. Thank you.

Yes a region free dvd is a special dvd that will let you see foreign movies ( from any region ) here in the US. They are now quite inexpensive and you can find plenty of choices on ebay. I have 2 of them and I can watch either American or Italian movies
Paolo

This site had an atrticle and it was extremely important. I was buying some Disney movies from Ebay.it that were in Italian. These DVDs are in PAL which from what I can figure out is what computer code is used to display the signal. In the states we use one called NTSC I think. It is four letters starting with NT. LOL. Also these DVDs were region 2 which is Europe. So there are 2 issues you need to address. The player has to convert PAL and be region free. Well I went to a website in Chicago called samstores.com and bought a DVD player that will play all DVDs for $100. I work good once you figure out how to program it. I hope this has helped you. And thank you all for repling.