no speaka the language

Thanks to a gift from my former employer upon my retirement, my husband and I have been preparing for our upcoming trip by attempting to learn Italian. We purchased the Rosetta Stone language curriculum that is done via the internet. We are both dutifully studying Italian for a half hour or so a day. We finished the first level recently, and were both horrified when we did the final exam to discover that we apparently had learned virtually nothing! Oh my. Now among all my worries about our upcoming trip, I must include the knowledge that I almost certainly will not be able to speak relatively good Italian when we settle there for two months this summer. While I was able to get by with only knowing how to ask for a glass of house red wine and order my daily pasta in our previous travels, I had hoped to be a bit more conversational this time. I won't give up. Perhaps it gets easier as you study more. After all, little Italian one-year-olds learn the language!