Week in Insights: Making Connections by Using ‘La Loro Lingua’

One year ago this week, I started learning Italian. It’s far from an immersion course—I spend a few minutes each day taking lessons from an array of cartoon characters on the Duolingo app. It’s vastly different from the way I learned French and Spanish, which was in a classroom every day with a teacher, taking tests, and getting graded.

I wanted to learn Italian after meeting my significant other’s family in Rome. Sitting at a table with his mother and sister and not understanding a single word being spoken was humbling. They couldn’t have been nicer and, thankfully, they knew ...