Buona sera!

Look what I got in the mail this week....

Level 1 of Rosetta Stone Italiano! 

I haven't opened it up yet, but I hope to start working with it soon and to become somewhat conversational by the time we leave for our trip to Italy in 4 months. I took 5 years of Spanish and can read it much better than speak it. When I am on vacation in a Spanish-speaking place, like I was in Puerto Rico on our Honeymoon, I can read a menu or a sign and can order food, etc., but that's about it. That's all I really hope for while in Italy as well.

Since Spanish & Italian are both romance languages & have many similarities, I'm hoping my spanish background will help me out a bit here. By the way, I always use the term "Romance Languages" just from knowing the department and classification in college, but just tonight I looked up what it really means, and also found this helpful diagram:

I'll let you know how the Rosetta Stone goes once I break it out and start using it :-) 

Has anyone else had luck learning with it before?