I have been learning Italian for years.
I can no longer remember why.
This seems like something one ought to know before investing several hundred hours of one’s life in prepositions, verb conjugations, and the inexplicable number of ways Italians have devised to say “the”.
I do, however, remember how I got here.
It began with Bosnian.
For several years I was in a relationship with a Bosnian man, so learning Bosnian seemed both romantic and practical. When the relationship ended, so did my motivation for learning the language.
I moved on to French (the language, not the men).
French sounded sophisticated. I imagined myself speaking it beautifully and becoming presumably, as elegant as Sylvie Grateau in Emily in Paris.
Then I discovered that the French have a rather casual relationship between how words are written and how they are pronounced.
Which is a little inconvenient for self-learners like myself.
So I moved on.
Spanish came next. Spanish was considerably more cooperative. Unfortunately, everybody and their uncle seemed to be learning Spanish.
Apparently, even my choice of language needed to be slightly contrary.
And that was how I arrived at Italian.
It had much of what appealed to me about Spanish, the pronunciation was reassuringly predictable, and fewer people seemed to be learning it.
Perfect.
Years later, I am still learning Italian.
I have since visited Italy and accumulated courses, books, apps, and podcasts. I have conjugated verbs while waiting for the train. I have abandoned methods, returned to others, forgotten vocabulary I distinctly remember learning, and occasionally produced an entire sentence without first constructing it in English.
I still couldn’t tell you exactly what I’m going to do with Italian when I finally become fluent.
But perhaps that stopped being the point somewhere along the way.
For now, I keep learning it.
Apparently, Italian and I are in a long-term relationship now.