Socratic educator Michael Strong with Alana

Nice audio. Hello, Alana.

Hello, Michael Strong.

How are you?

Good, how are you?

I'm well. I hear your voice, but I don't see video. Do you have video? Let's turn that on. Video. Go for it. Ah, there you go. Tell me where you are.

I'm in Venice right now.

Whoa! What is Venice like?

Very hot, actually, but when you're like in a boat, you're kind of cooler.

And are you in boats out on the ocean, or where do you go on boats in Venice?

In Venice, basically on the bay, basically, or through towns. Because boats are Venice's cars and the water is Venice's streets.

So you can go up and down the streets of Venice in a boat?

Yeah, or you can walk on sidewalks.

What do you think of that? Do you like having a city with kind of canals and streets?

Yeah, I do.

So what do you love most about Venice?

Boats. Or gondolas. Basically gondolas.

And what do you love about gondolas?

It's not— it doesn't have a motor. It's used by hand. That's what I like about it. I'm not really into motors right now.

I see. And so somebody kind of pushes it?

Yeah, with paddles, actually. For the type of gondola that I rode in today, there's 2 people.

I see. Well, so the gondolas are your favorite part of Venice. What is your least favorite? Is there anything you don't love about Venice?

No.

All right. How long have you been there for?

I arrived, I think, the day— I think I actually arrived Yesterday, I think. I think so.

Okay. And I expect they probably speak Italian in Venice.

Yeah, a little bit.

Yeah.

Since Venice is in Italy.

And tú hablas español, sí? Tú puedes hablar en español? Can you understand Italian a little bit?

I only know like 2 words. Grazie and ciao. That's all I know.

Okay, grazie is pretty similar to gracias in Spanish, yes?

Yeah, because, yeah, they both mean the same, I think.

Did you know that Spanish and Italian are related languages?

A little bit, because "dónde está el baño" is close to "dov'è il bagno," which is in Italian.

Exactly. Why do you think some languages are close, are related to each other? What does it mean for languages to be related to each other?

I actually don't know.

Okay. Have you ever heard German?

No, but maybe some person just made up, oh, here's Italian. Hey, here's Spanish. They're related.

Yay. I see. So you think somebody just made them up, uh, and that's how it all happened. Where do you think all human languages were just made up by one person at a time? So Maybe someday we'll speak Alana speak?

I don't think so, but you can make up your own languages, like secret languages.

That's true. That's true. Do you think animals have languages?

Yeah.

What animals? What's an example of an animal that has a language?

A bird.

And do you think one famous bird created, say, the sparrow language?

Maybe.

So if— so you think all languages for animals and people were created by one person?

No, I—

no. How could language happen if you don't have one person creating it? How could birds figure out language or create a language?

A whole community doing it, like, hey, I'm a community, what should we name this? English, and what's the first word? The.

Which is a very interesting hypothesis on your part, but you're assuming they can already talk to each other. How do they, you know, if they don't yet have a language, how can they say what language should we create? Do you see the problem?

With their hands?

So maybe you think they started, so, but if they don't have a language, how do they talk with their hands even?

Sign language, maybe. Maybe they already knew sign language.

Hmm. But what would the very first words in sign language be?

I don't know.

Okay. Do you see it's kind of a puzzle how languages got started? Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, we don't need to work on that more this morning, but I wanted you to think about that a little bit. What's that?

For me, afternoon.

Exactly, exactly. Thank you. Um, the other thing I wanted to check is culture. Do you know what culture is?

Like your type of community or something?

Yeah. Do you think— does it seem like Italy has a different culture from San Diego? Yeah. So what do they do differently there?

First of all, for Venice, which is a culture in Italy, but for now I'm just talking about Venice from San Diego. San Diego, um, I don't really see like rivers inside the cities or gondolas, so that's a different culture or something. We only see cars, but we only see cars a little bit in Venice. Like, the only time I saw cars was when I was dropping off my car.

So the gondolas instead of cars, that's one big example. Any other differences in how they do things in Venice versus San Diego?

Hmm, actually, don't.

How about the food? Is the food exactly the same?

Some foods can be. I think I've seen a lot of the same.

Do they have what you would call Italian food there?

Yeah.

Is it the same? Is it the same as Italian food in San Diego?

I think the— in Italy, that the Italian food is better.

What makes it better?

Like, it's the home of Italian food. It's the thing that made it, not San Diego. It's Italy.

So why does that make it necessarily better? Maybe San Diego could do better Italian food than Italy.

Maybe, but Italy is like, it's been like, it's the mother and father of Italian food. So maybe like it's been doing longer, so they do it a lot more.

I got it, I got it. One other difference I could imagine are there, I bet there are some buildings in Venice that are pretty old. Is that accurate?

Yeah, even in other places in Italy like Rome. Yeah.

And probably a lot older than buildings in San Diego?

Yes, I think San Diego looks a lot— I think San Diego buildings look a lot newer. Like, I went to go see the Colosseum. Whew, that looks old.

And how can you tell it looks old?

Some parts have fallen, the roof has fallen, there's— but a lot of things are cool about it, actually.

What's cool about it?

They used to fight in sand, there's an underground platform, it's really cool.

All right, so are you learning a lot about Italian history and culture? Yeah. So what's one thing you learned about Italian history?

For me, I love the Colosseum, like for the more ancient ruins. So for me, so in history basically, so in, so when they built the Colosseum, it was for like entertainment for like visitors or maybe just shows, like maybe like one show a month or something.

Yep, yep, so that's definitely pretty fascinating, and I think some of the entertainments were pretty horrible. Did you hear about how horrible they were?

No.

Okay, we don't need to go there. But I am so envious of you that you will get to be in Italy and you get to be eating Italian food and listening to Italian and riding the gondolas. And art, have you seen any great art? Art? Yeah, like big old paintings.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of painters here.

You like the paintings?

Yeah, I do. Italy is really good at painting.

Well, wonderful. So thank you so much for waiting despite the technical difficulties. I did want to Talk to you while you were in Venice and see how you're absorbing it. I love it when you said, "Whoo, the Colosseum is old." So any last comments on your experience in Italy?

It's really fun. I think for me, Rome, Tuscany, like everywhere I go there's like Italian and I really like it because I get to learn, like I get to hear Italian. So if you hear Italian, It's like, just like hear it so that you can kind of like hear some words.

Exactly. And as you become more fluent in Spanish, ultimately I think Italian will be easy for you to learn. And then you can speak English, Spanish, and Italian, all three. How about that?

Maybe.

Maybe that'll work. Okay, have a great trip, Alana.

Okay.

Bye-bye. Ciao. Bye.

Ciao.