I’LL TELL YOU EVERYTHING: honest ANSWERS (zero privacy!) to your QUESTIONS

Dear students and friends of LearnAmo, the topic we will be discussing will be a bit different from the others, because we will not talk about grammar, there will be no exercises and we will not study Italian culture. I’ve decided to tell you a little bit more about myself, I’ll open up a little to you so you can get to know me better. On social media I asked you to ask me some questions about what you would like to know about me, Rocco, LearnAmo and our private life. Read on to find out everything!

 

Discovering the creators of LearnAmo

Information about Graziana

Hi Learnamici, as you already know, my name is Graziana Filomeno, I am 24 years old and I was born and raised in a small town near Bari, in Puglia. I had a rather normal and traditional school carreer, like all Italians. I went to kindergarten, then elementary school, middle school and when I chose high school I decided to attend scientific high school, because at that time, when I was 14 years old, I thought I liked math very much! By the way, do you remember how the Italian school system works?

Then, after five years of mathematics and physics, chemistry and biology, I realized that maybe that wasn’t my greatest passion and that my greatest passion was talking and learning different languages. For this reason I have completely changed my course of study at the university, choosing a degree in Communication and Linguistic and Intercultural Mediation which ,in simple terms, analyzes how one should behave and relate between the various languages, at both the social and translation levels.

 

How did we meet me and Rocco?

The answer is: right at the university! In fact, he also attended the same university in Bari and we met there. Rocco and I have been together since 2015. After the University we moved to various cities in Italy: we lived in Bologna, we lived in Rome, we lived in Florence… What do you think the next town will be?

Many of you have also asked us if we’re married and… no, we’re not married yet, even though we’ve known each other for a long time. It’s probably something that will happen in the future, but we’re not thinking about it yet! It could also be a cultural issue, because in Italy people tend to get married a bit later in life and tend to spend a lot of time as engaged. What happens in your culture instead? Do you get married a few years after the engagement or after a long time, as in Italy? Let me know in the comments!

 

How was it born LearnAmo?

As I was saying, Rocco and I met at the university, we both studied foreign languages, and we both used online resources, especially Youtube, to improve the languages we were studying, to learn new concepts, new words… and it was a very fascinating world for us. In the meantime I had also started to give online lessons in Italian, which is something I always liked. I’ve always loved doing Italian grammar exercises when I was at school, I know it’s a bit strange… but it’s the truth! So Rocco said to me: “So why don’t we open a Youtube channel? We have the knowledge to do so and we can help those who, just like us, are studying foreign languages and in particular are studying Italian as a foreign language!”. At first I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical but I said: “Okay, let’s try!”.  And so it all started  as joke. We did not know what to expect from the future, we did not know if we or our videos would be liked by the audience, we did not know anything.

Our first goal was to help people who had difficulties, just like us, with foreign languages, especially with Italian. At the beginning we studied a lot to understand how everything had to be done and we divided the tasks, so Rocco gets all the credit of having really created the skeleton, the fundamental bases of this project. He’s always taken a lot of care of the technical part, the backstage part, and so he’s been studying, for example, how to open a Youtube channel, how to post videos, how to create a website (which is quite complicated) and so on… Me, on the other hand, I have always been a little more concerned with the content part, the creative part, and I must say that as a system it works well! What do you think?

Many liked the project, we are really happy with that, and I must say that one of the greatest satisfactions of mine, and I can also speak on behalf of Rocco, of our life, was our Silver Button, that we received when we exceeded 100,000 members! It was one of the greatest satisfactions, something we never expected at the beginning, but that really fills us with pride and great satisfaction! All this would not have been possible without you, so we really thank you from the bottom of our heart, thanks to those who were there from the beginning, thanks to those who joined later, but soon won our hearts anyway! Thanks to those who have always complimented us, who has always supported us, thanks to those who have made constructive criticism, because of course they have helped us to grow! Really, FROM THE BOTTOM OF OUR HEARTS, THANK YOU! As always, we read all your comments, we read all your messages, but often we do not have the material time to respond to everyone, because otherwise we will not be able to create our content! But really, we read you and we are super happy with the affection you feel for us!

 

Why did we choose the name LearnAmo?

If you have been on this channel for many years, you will surely remember that in our first videos we called our channel: “LearnIamo”, in fact the I was not present in the name, but we still called it like that. Subsequently, many people pointed out in the comments that it was a bit strange, since there was no I, and for this reason we admitted that in fact you were right. We wanted to do something a little bit funny, some word play with the word love, with the word learn, then adding some internationality, but at the same time also with the word we learn, So I love learning and consequently LearnAmo… we made a bit of a mess but in the end it became LearnAmo and we are very satisfied with this name, what do you think?

So yes, to answer definitively, originally it was Learniamo, but in fact there was never an I, because our goal was to play with learning and love learning.

 

Our hobbies

I can say that I like reading a lot and I like writing a lot, in fact it is for this reason that I realized, thanks to the help of Rocco, the book Italiano Colloquiale: Parole ed Espressioni per Tutti i Giorni.  As a child I had secret diaries in which I wrote a little about my days and, by the way, it is something that I also recommend to you to do in Italian, because I think it is very useful and helps you, if you write just a couple of phrases about your day in Italian every day. I also love to travel and I also love watching movies and TV series, especially in foreign language. So I’m an addict to TV showsand movies, I always try to save myself a couple of hours on normal day iduring the evening when I’m a little tired and I just want to watch a good movie or watch a couple of episodes of various TV shows. In fact, if you have TV movies to recommend, let me know in the comments! I’m always looking for new advices!

 

What do we prefer between a movie and rock concert?

Rocco and I love the cinema, our first date was at the cinema and so we go there very often. Now we took a break, like everyone else as I imagine, because of  Covid, but we really can’t wait to go back! We mostly like watching Marvel movies, something that he made me discover and that I love now. But we actually watch all kinds of movies. The rock concert is not really our favorite thing, we like to listen to rock music, for example I really like it when I work out, to give me some energy or when I’m a little down. But I wouldn’t go to a rock concert personally.

Speaking of concerts: we had bought tickets for a concert that was postponed twice because of Covid and we hope it will be held now in 2021. It’s Ultimo’s concert, for those who don’t know him, he’s one of my favorite Italian singers and his genre is pop, so commercial music. I don’t know if we can go to this concert, we’ll see!

 

What are our plans for the future?

As I said before, we are trying to get around the whole Italy, we have already lived in various cities, but we would still like to discover others and we hope that it will soon be possible. Our goal would be to go and live for a while in other countries of Europe and the world. For the moment in our top 3 countries where we want to spend some time there are: France, Spain and the United States. In our opinion, in order to really know a city, to really know a country, it is important to live there, it is important to spend a long time there. Because a trip of a few days, a week, is definitely beautiful. but it doesn’t really give you the 360 degree experience. Because you get to visit all the tourist spots, which of course are beautiful, but we realized that there are as many beautiful places, that only those who live in those places know, so for us it is very, very important. That would be our goal, but we’re waiting because our plans are stalled because of Covid.

These are just the first three in our list, the goal would be to move, why not, to many other countries in the world for a few months. Where do you think we should go to live besides these three countries? Let us know in the comments!

And then, after all these tours, our goal is to find the city that really makes us fall in love, to settle down and then stop there in that city. Who knows which city will steal our heart…

 

Why did we leave Puglia?

Of course Puglia is in our hearts, Puglia is the place where we were born and raised, where our families are and so we clearly can not forget her. We always return with great affection, we are very happy to spend time there (in fact we did our best to let you know, as when we told you about Polignano a Mare and Trani). We simply think that it is important, even for personal growth, move and live various experiences, and then return home with a much bigger knowledge than when you left!

What do we think about Latin America?

We know we have many subscribers from Latin America and we thank you! We never left Europe, but we would love to visit Latin America! In particular, I would love to visit Brazil, because the beaches are beautiful (this is what it seems from the photos) and then, because I am a good eater, this is no longer a secret, I would love to try the famous churrasco, do you know how to pronounce it?

 

What do we prefer between cats and dogs?

We would prefer to get a dog, but first we need to settle, when this will happen we will take it, although then there will be some discussions between me and Rocco about the breed of the dog. He likes bigger dogs and I like smaller dogs. We’ll probably take a big one and a small one, we’ll see.

 

Do we have tattoos?

No, we don’t have any, and right now it’s not part of our plan to get them.

 

Wich team are we rooting for?

Perfect question, since Italy has just won the European Championship! We are not big fans of football! Obviously we have cheered until the last breath the Italian national team, because you feel a bit of patriotism in these situations and we watched all the games. In fact I also wear a blue shirt, just like our national team! As for the other teams, we are not really fans of a team in particular, in Italian it is said simpatizzare per una squadra, (sympathize for a team) that means not really have the passion for a team and knowing everything about it, watch all the games, but have a certain preference for that team. For Rocco is Juventus, in my case instead, I’m a bit more international, and sono simpatizzante del  (I sympathize for) Paris Saint Germain.

 

What, in my opinion, is the greatest characteristic of Italians?

My reply would be: passion, because we really put passion in everything we do, even simply in talking. We love to speak with a very high tone of voice or we love to speak with gestures, because we think all this gives more emphasis and emphasizes more what we are saying.

 

What is the most difficult situation to record a video?

Certainly when the neighbors are not cooperative and very often this happens in Italy! I know it’s not their fault, because they don’t know that I’m recording a video, but very often (you’ve probably seen some bloopers in my videos) I get angry with my neighbors, because they always speak with a high tone of voice,  they put music at high volume, they do some diy chores…and all this makes it difficult to record videos, because of course the quality of audio is essential for you who study Italian! It actually happens the same thing during the lessons, for example when I take my lessons with my students very often we laugh and we have fun, because there are noises on the street, but unfortunately these are things that do not depend on us and that we can not control. So if sometimes you hear noises in our videos we are sorry, we really try to avoid them as much as possible!

 

Do we talk the pugliese dialect?

Rocco and I both speak the pugliese dialect. In reality there is not really a pugliese dialect, but there are local dialects, one for each city almost (if you want to brush up on the subject, we remind you that we wrote just an article dedicated to Italian dialects). So Rocco and I speak two different dialects, because obviously we come from different cities. In general, we can understand each other, because of course the region is the same, Puglia, but there are some words that are still a bit different. We tend to speak dialect, for example, with our grandparents, sometimes with our parents and sometimes with our friends, maybe to fool around.

The dialect of Bari, for example, is very different from the dialects of other Italian cities, I guarantee, is really very different and is also very different from the standard Italian, for example, if I told you: “Nan g voggj sc’ da”, what would you understand? I know, I know, it sounds like a language from another planet, but I just told you, I don’t want to go there.

 

Do we understand a dialect from another city?

No, if in a TV series there are people who speak only dialect, and they are from a city different from ours, we need subtitles to understand everything, because otherwise even for us Italians is impossible to do so.

 

Why my and Rocco’s accents are different?

Every Italian city, even if it is a very close city, has a very strong and particular accent, which is different from other cities, certainly, because of the influence of the dialect. The situation of dialects in Italy is very interesting and if you haven’t seen the video yet, which explains how dialects work and what they are, don’t forget to take a look at it!

 

We thank you once again for having believed in us from the beginning, thank you so much for continuing to follow us with so much affection and we apologize once again if we can not respond to everyone. We know that there are many people who tell us that they want more communication, but it’s a bit difficult with all the comments, all the emails, all the messages that we receive! We are grateful to you for everything you do for us, we try to show our affection for you by creating interesting (we hope)and funny videos… we also have a newsletter, if you have not yet subscribed you can do it! In this newsletter, from now on we will also start sending emails with curiosities, with other small information and pills, so if you haven’t done it yet, sign up!

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