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Student Teach Thyself: My Dubbed Podcast in Italian

Navigating the difficult task of teaching oneself Italian through the marvels of AI voice dubbing is a 21st-century twist on the ancient wisdom of “Physician, heal thyself.” That age-old saying, ripped from the heart of biblical narratives, pushes us towards self-reflection and repair before we set out to fix or guide others. When we apply this idea to the adventure of self-learning Italian — or any foreign language! — by using our own voices echoed back to us in Italian through AI wizardry, welp, it’s like we’re living in a high-tech remix of that proverb.

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Learning Italian Lifetime Immersion Style

For the past 60 days, I have been intensively studying the Italian language. I want to learn Italian in order to better serve our ASL Opera project since 50% of the most popular operas were written in Italian (25% were written in German, and 15% were written in French). I understand modern Italian isn’t the same as “original opera Italian” — but learning something new only helps deepen the appreciation of the comprehension of the context of the original aesthetic. In this article, I will share with you some of the treasures, and techniques, I have been using to apply a greater understanding to my Italian learning.

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A Romanov in a Pau Garden: A Glorious Last Moment in Living History

One sunny morning in Pau, one of the neighbors came to take some plants for his garden.  The elderly gentleman in the photograph on the right is Monsieur Romanov — a  descendant of the Romanov family, rulers of Russia from 1613 until the Russian Revolution in 1917.

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