(speaking in Italian)
You need to meet people. You need to meet real Italians. You need to get out there
Get yourself an Italian honey.
If you're in a relationship,
Get yourself an Italian honey.
(rewind noises)
Get yourself an Italian best friend.
How do you do that? Swipe until your thumbs fall off.
Bumble works here, Tinder works here
I am here completely alone. Like, I ain't got no friends, I ain't got no family, I got nothing.
I literally have no reason to be here, but I love being here,
so I decided to come here alone and just
rent an AirBNB and live here like a local.
I have met so many people, some good, some baaaaaad
I'm usually not a fan of dating apps because I like meeting people in person
Here's the thing with Italians, and Romans specifically,
they like to go out in groups
For some reason it seems like all of my experiences with Italians have been in massive groups.
And if I weren't in those groups, I would never be able to integrate myself into those groups.
You see what I'm saying?
So that's number one. Number two is that
Rome is a city that's actually huge, and the public transportation's not that good.
So people drive their own cars
It's almost the same concept as Los Angeles where people are secluded in their car bubbles
so there isn't that much opportunity to meet people in transit.
So I realized if I wanted to meet people, I had to jump on the apps
and break my thumbs until I found good people to meet up with.
OK, let's say you're afraid of going on Tinder dates cuz you're here alone
and you're, like, not about that life
You can use our family, the Shut Up and Go family
I'm including a link to our Facebook group though.
That's a group where you guys can meet each other
Like, we ain't even in that group really
You go in, you say "Hey, I'm in Rome alone. Is anybody here?"
But don't just hang out with the same people.
People speak differently
So if I hang out with one friend, I'm gonna pick up her accent. If I hang out with another friend, I'm gonna pick up his slang.
And now my brain is, like, exploding with knowledge of all different kinds of Italian
And then I can craft my own base on what I like and what I don't like
And that's basically how babies learn how to speak.
So I'm probably, like, a five-year-old in Italy, here
Let's say I don't wanna talk to anybody
(speaking in Italian)
I was really sick one night, and I was like "Alright, alright. I'm not trying to be on no Tinder dates, or you know what I mean.
(cough)
I'm good.
I ended up staying home, and I didn't want the night to be wasted with no Italian, so
I turn on Netflix.com, and I watched some of my favorite shows that I knew had dubbed Italian speech
So I watched Bojack Horseman.
So good!
Friends
So good!
The trick is to watch something you already watched in English.
You're gonna know what's going on because you've already watched it.
Those shows are dubbed with, like, conversational language
Another obvious thing that you could do to learn is books
But books are tricky because I went to the library, and I was like,
"Do you have books for learners that are just beginning with a language
"No, we have kid's books."
"OK, well, I'm not a kid." .....Sometimes I am.
But I wanna learn, like, human, adult language
So where can I go for that?
So then I started skimming through this library
and there was nothing. I found this book.
Everybody has been making fun of me for it because apparently, Fabio Volo
If you read it, you get judged
if you read this book.
But the reason why I picked it was cuz it was easy enough for me to understand everything.
By no means this is the best literature I've ever read in my life
But it's doing the trick.
Another thing that I've been using, and I've used this in every country, like,
Catch me in France with a French magazine
Catch me in Italy with Italian magazines
Magazines are so good cuz they're masters of using bite-size language to convey a thought.
Also, there's a lot of slang. Also, you can see what the fashion is like.
Also, you can see how many cellulite creams one Italian magazine is trying to promote.
I'm gonna go get some creams...
And the last absolutely critical thing that you need
to learn a language
Completely free of charge
Is you need to download a note pad app or use your notes or whatever you need to do
write everything down.
You need to write it down.
Write it down. I don't care if you're in the middle of a conversation.
Say, "Hold on. I'm sorry, what did you just say?"
Literally me everytime I'm out with an Italian.
I'm sorry, what was that? Can you help me with spelling?
Literally in the middle of professing love for something passionate, cuz that's what Italians always do,
And I'm like...... Shhhh.
Pause the moment. Tell me what you just said so I can write it down.
Here's some of the things that I've learned and I've written down
And I wouldn't have remembered if I hadn't written it down.
(speaking in Italian)
Apparently, there is an expression in Italian that means "I know my chickens. Conosco i miei polli."
And it means, like, I know my stuff because... apparently when you know your chickens, you know your stuff.
Another one is (speaking in Italian)
You're a girl in leg.
What???
And apparently being a girl in leg means that you're a smart girl.
And now I'll never forget these great expression because I wrote it all down.
I literally started making it a big research project where if I'm sitting with an Italian,
I'll give them this list and ask them to add on to it.
And they're always surprised, like,
"How do you know that? Who taught you that?"
And I'm like
That's it for today. I hope this helped.
Just to give you an example of how to learn a language without going to school.
Literally consume everything.
I'm telling you. Even "baci" you know that little chocolate candy?
I would show you but I ate all mine.
On the inside of these baci, there are these tiny little, like, not fortunes, but, like,
love pick-up line... samples.
(speaking in Italian)
Is it you that came down from heaven,
or is it me who is in heaven with you
Y'all are trying to make me fall in love with an Italian.
Get out there! Shut up and go! Shut up and go learn a new language so you can be funny in multiple languages
so you can have cool friends
so you can escape from the boring friends you have back -
Just kidding, bring your friends too!
And that's it. (speaking in Italian)
(speaking in Italian)
Another thing that I noticed, they start from the left when they kiss you.
So then it was that thing where, like, I almost kissed somebody on the lips without wanting to
because it was like the...
You gotta check that out.
When you're traveling, like, become a social and cultural anthropologist.
Cuz you're gonna need that research so you don't make yourself
Look like "un pazzo" or "matto."
A crazy person.