Learning Italian has taught me many things beyond the language itself. Italian is the second foreign language I am learning. Each language has its particularities and the moment of life in which I dedicated myself to each one was completely different.

I started studying English at age 10. Twice a week, I attended a class for years. Learning English was part of my routine, such as going to school and having lunch daily. My story with the Italian language started much later, when I was 32, in the middle of a pandemic.

I have lived with anxiety for years. Naturally, I want to get out of point A and get to B as quickly as possible. It was no different with Italian. Because it is a language more similar to Portuguese, I thought learning would be empirical. It was not.

Learning Italian was harder than I thought!

Letting a language enter your life opens your world to a new culture and puts your certainties into perspective. It’s a process that takes you out of your comfort zone and invites you to open your horizons. Knowing a language without immersing yourself in the complete learning cycle is impossible.

Last week, I was live on Instagram with the dear English teacher Cris Vieira. In an informal conversation, we shared what is essential for success in any area. In language learning, as in life, you can’t take shortcuts. To learn new knowledge, you must sit down, practice, study, and repeat.

Many of us, in a rush to achieve results demanded by an increasingly fast-paced society, try to skip steps and obtain degrees as quickly as possible. Haste breeds frustration and suffering. Results, as the word suggests, are consequences of a process. Although we live in a time when everything seems to be resolved in 15 seconds, turning projects into reality requires time, effort, and a lot of dedication.