Thanks, Carmela. I am going to try to get some sort of translator app for my Nook. I am gonna' brush up on the old mother tongue I think and maybe scoring a few of these books will put me back on track. I wish my great grand-parents hadn't insisted on immediate assimilation when they came over, I'd probably be fluent. My G.P.'s still speak Italian/Calabro-Sicilian, albeit occasionally, and I'm not always around them, but my parents don't and really never did. It's hard to retain that, and hard was hard to differentiate the difference from the Sicilian when they slipped into that. I am trying to re-learn what I lost and become truly fluent. I think that will be cool.
Good luck. Granted, the best way to learn the language is being around people speaking it constantly. Even I can only really speak dialect, but I can read and understand Italian. No matter what, you can do anything if you really want it, but if you try and surround yourself with people that speak it, or if it were possible for you to spend a good amount of time in Italy, you'd pick it up quicker. I understand that's not usually possible, though. Forget about things like Rosetta Stone, etc. You can start by reading Italian journals online like La Repubblica or Giornale di Sicilia. It helps, believe it or not.
