This one-and-a-half-hour Italian Language Workshop is usually led by a Ph.d. candidate in linguistics at Roma Tre University in Rome. Andrea's dissertation deals with the historical and linguistic relationship between English (which he speaks superbly) and Italian. Thus, while partly this workshop is intended to give you a quick intro course on how to speak Italian and will arm you with a few key phrases to use during your visit, its primary purpose is to give you a sense of how the Italian language functions and how by understanding this we can learn more about Italian culture as a whole.

 The group meets at an enoteca near the Roman Forum for the workshop, which lasts 1.5 hours. We will provide a small pot of tea or sparkling water. Anything more substantial will be the responsibility of each individual. Your leader will cover some of the basics of Italian language and, responding to each participant's familiarity and background, will present some key phrases that will help you during your visit. This exercise naturally leads into a variety of tangential discussions about the history of Italian. For example, we might talk about the difference between Italian and Romanesco (the Roman dialect), which would lead into a discussion of dialects across Italy and perhaps the wonderfully suprising fact that the national language is actually the Florentine dialect. This, in many ways, is the primary purpose of the workshop: to use language as a way of getting under the surface of the culture and engaging in a full exploration of Italy.