How do we know we’re changing?

It’s a question that has been following me around for years. Yesterday, for the first time, I felt I had caught a glimpse of an answer.

How do we recognise a transformation while it is happening? More importantly, are we even capable of recognising it?

We tend to assume that change should be visible. If I’m becoming a better cook, my dishes should taste and look better. If I’m learning to dance, my movements should feel more fluid. If I’m studying Italian, I should sound more Italian.

It seems obvious. And yet, I wonder if this is one of the greatest illusions of learning.

What if the first thing to change isn’t the thing we are looking at?

A conversation with a student made me think about this. She told me, quite calmly, that she didn’t feel she had improved. We had spent a total of just thirteen hours together, yet she was already convinced that nothing had changed. A few minutes earlier, however, she had said something that neither of us stopped to examine at the time. She told me that whenever she read now, she could hear how the words should sound. She noticed when something didn’t quite belong.

She offered those two observations as evidence of failure.

To me, they sounded like evidence of the opposite.

Perhaps the worst stage of learning is the one in which our perception changes before our performance does.

The musician hears the wrong note long before they can consistently play the right one. The painter suddenly realises that shadows are not grey after all. The body hasn’t caught up yet, but the eyes have. Or the ears.

Language follows the same strange logic.

One day you become able to hear an Italian sentence in a way you never could before. You hear that your intonation is different. You hear that your rhythm still carries traces of another language. You hear a vowel opening just a little too much, or not enough. Yesterday none of this existed. Today it is everywhere.

It feels as though you’ve become worse.
In reality, your ears have simply travelled further than your voice.

There is something cruel about this asymmetry. Our perception races ahead, while the muscles, breathing, habits and automatisms that have accompanied us for decades move at a much slower pace. We judge ourselves by what we can produce, not by what we have learned to perceive. And because we don’t yet hear the result we long for, we conclude that nothing is happening.

What if we are measuring the wrong thing?

The same mechanism is at work in many other parts of life, I think. Becoming emotionally aware can feel, for a while, like becoming more fragile. Learning about nonviolent communication suddenly reveals how deeply violence is embedded even in expressions we have always considered harmless. Attentive listening to native speakers can make us feel like poorer communicators because we suddenly notice everything that still sounds different in our own speech.

Perhaps every meaningful transformation begins by making us aware of a gap that was already there but had previously been invisible. If that’s true, discouragement may not always be a sign that we are failing.

It is the first sign that we are finally improving!

Only after the lesson I realised that my student and I had been talking about time in two completely different ways.

We had both been talking about thirteen hours, but we weren’t talking about the same time.

To me, they were simply the beginning of a new process. The first few steps in retraining habits that had taken many decades to build.

To my student, those hours were not standing on their own. They sat on top of an entire lifetime of trying to learn Italian. Years of classes. Years of effort. Years of hoping that, sooner or later, something would finally click. She wasn’t measuring our thirteen hours.

She was measuring the weight of everything that had come before them.

Around the same time, another student told me something that has stayed with me just as vividly. She too had been studying Italian for almost twenty years. Yet after few hours together she smiled and said, “I’ve never worked on Italian like this before.”

The chronology was almost identical. Their experience of time couldn’t have been more different. One was adding few hours to twenty years of frustration. The other was experiencing the beginning of something entirely new.

As teachers, trainers or coaches, this is something worth remembering. We occupy a curious position. Standing just beside the learner’s experience, we often notice tiny changes most of them cannot yet recognise: a softer rhythm, a more natural phrase, a moment of genuine musicality. They are listening to the distance still separating them from the voice they long for. We are listening to the distance they have already travelled.

Perhaps the greatest difference between us is not what we hear, but how we experience time. Someone living with the painful feeling of not being “good enough” naturally wants that feeling to disappear as quickly as possible. We, on the other hand, know that profound transformations have a completely different relationship with time. They unfold slowly, much more slowly than our frustration would like them to. Not because we are unwilling, but because the body cannot be persuaded to abandon decades of habits simply because one side of the mind has grown impatient.

That lesson, I realised yesterday, is for everyone.

Those who have more experience in something can hear/see/feel changes before beginners do. They can point towards them and can create the conditions in which changes become possible.

But they cannot do the work on someone else’s behalf.

Perhaps teaching is, in part, learning to respect that path. The body has its own wisdom. The mind has its own knots.

And every deep transformation asks the same thing of all of us: not to become someone else as quickly as possible, but to give ourselves enough time to become who we are capable of becoming.

With love.

(This is me telling you the contents of the article in Italian, except for the introduction which is in English. Buon ascolto.)

This is The Italian Reading Room. Benvenuta, benvenuto!
If you are an advanced student of Italian, you probably don’t need more grammar exercises. You need to inhabit the language, learn how to wear the sound of Italian like a second skin.

And that’s what The Italian Reading Room is for.

This mini-glossary will give you an idea of my approach.

• Cognitive friction (frizione cognitiva): it’s that invisible wall many advanced or intermediate students hit. If you already think in Italian almost all the time and you rarely translate in your head anymore, if your vocabulary is good and you can handle a conversation with Italians but… you feel not really at ease… that’s the friction.
  Your conscious brain knows exactly how Italian should sound, but your muscles haven't caught up. You are thinking advanced and you speak intermediate if not beginner. Your speech configuration is still tied to your native language, leading to unexpected fatigue and frustration.
  Sounds familiar?
  The good news is: it can be fixed.

• Linguistic embodiment (incarnazione linguistica): moving from speaking Italian with your intellect to speaking it with your whole being. Body included. It happens when the language stops being abstract and becomes presence, movement, breath. Awareness.
  That’s when your voice goes from black and white to colours, from flat to tridimensional. It becomes a mirror of your new identity, capable of freeing hidden parts of your personality.

• Prosody (prosodia), the magic word! Traditional education and AI apps, focus only on static pronunciation. Prosody is what makes a language alive and natural: it’s the musicality and elegance of the spoken word. It includes the rhythm, the pitch, diction of course, the intentional use of pauses, the magic of fierce or velvety consonants, and the musicality of our vowels’ waves that give authentic Italian its soul and emotional depth.

• Attentive listening (ascolto attento): in my coaching, listening is the primary diagnostic tool. Attentive listening (also self-listening) means observing not just grammar mistakes, but noticing the speaker’s breathing patterns, hesitation, physical tension, vocal habits, and emotional response. And this leads to, or actually derives from…

• Sonic awareness (consapevolezza sonora): this is what we start working from day one! The capacity to perceive, hear and decode the acoustic texture of your own world, inside and outside yourself. In doing so, your vocal space expands and enriches.
  

Free your sound!

This is how we work in The Italian Reading Room.
Listening to your body and your emotions, smoothing out the friction that keeps your sound trapped, we - together - sculpt your Italian Voice and let it out!

If all of this resonates with you, you are in the right place!

• Step 1: Subscribe to the my channel to receive my articles and audio.

• Step 2: If you feel ready to shift from theory to practice, reply to this post or reach out via email.

Let’s free your voice together.

A presto!

We all know that language begins before words. Long before a baby pronounces a single word, communication is already happening on a completely different level, one that is deeply physical, unconscious, relational.
Then we grow up.

We start learning foreign languages, and we suddenly dry up. We check dictionaries, memorize vocabulary, worry about grammar (and, if we’re lucky, pronunciation too), and behave as if words were the place where language begins. We treat language as if it were software to install in the brain... completely forgetting the body.

But it’s a massive illusion. I’ve been re-reading Oliver Sacks’ Seeing Voices, his journey into the world of the deaf, and it constantly forces you to rethink what language actually is. It isn’t a code of abstract symbols; it is space, anatomy, biology, and presence. It is the psyche utilizing the body to exist in the world.
And right in the middle of these readings, a new student during her very first lesson said something that connected everything:

“When I speak Italian, I’m an extrovert. In my language, I’m not.”

We spend so much time asking how we learn words that we rarely stop to ask a much deeper, more unsettling question: what is a foreign language doing to our subconscious? Where does it actually take root?

This is the core of what I do with The Italian Reading Room. The voice is body,
and I don’t mean it as a metaphor. When I listen to someone speaking, I am an antenna catching a subterranean landscape that goes way beyond pronunciation.
I perceive breathing, rhythm, muscular tone, hesitation, ease, tension, emotional blocks.
I perceive the invisible movement that happens before the sound. This is why my student’s observation blew me away. She wasn’t talking about vocabulary. She was realizing that Italian was demanding a different involvement from her. It was shifting her internal posture, bypassing her usual defenses, and allowing a dormant, hidden part of herself to break through.

I know exactly what she means because I experience the exact same transition when I speak English. There are rare, luminous hours when my body is rested and the language just flows, and in those moments, I don’t just think differently, I move differently through my thoughts. My internal axis shifts. English allows me to inhabit a more assertive, direct space that my native Italian rarely asks of me. It’s not that I become a completely different person, but a part of me finds a new way to relate to the world.

Per concludere…

Learning a language is an emotional and deeply relational act. It lives in stories, memories, and the people we love. It lives in breath, pace, gestures, and those silent, invisible reactions that pass between two human beings before, beneath, and beyond words.
Maybe this is why sometimes we fall in love with a language before we can even speak it: our heart recognizes something in its sound, its rhythm, its emotional frequency. We recognize a place where a part of ourselves can finally breathe.

So, when I ask “Who are you in Italian?”, I am not asking which words you know or how good your grammar is. I am asking: what part of your identity, your unexpressed emotion and your invisible movement are you giving permission to exist through your Italian Voice?

They have wings, yet they choose the slow, clumsy rhythm of the ground. Lou wrote about this quiet power of observation: how the most valuable insights come only when we look at something for a very long time, without an agenda, embracing questions rather than absolute certainties.

I loved the calm pace of her style, the intimacy of her gaze. Well, I love everything about Lou, she is one the most beautiful humans I know, I call her “walking poetry”. I’ll put the link to her Substack in the final paragraph below.
Do follow her, you’ll thank me later.

Anyway… reading her piece made me think of my students (surprise surprise), and of this strange, almost violent illusion we are all trapped in: the idea that learning a language is a straight line.

We are constantly sold this myth of the superefficient, bumpless highway.
Impara una lingua in tre mesi, quindici minuti al giorno! Yeeeey, easy peasy right?
Nope. That’s too businessy, a neat and quick arrow pointing up towards your perfect fluency. But there is a huge, frankly cruel, psychological trap in this.

If one morning for whatever reason your brain just cant’t think in your own language let alone another one, if you can’t remember the words you knew so well yesterday, if your tongue all of a sudden feels like wet cardboard… the easiest conclusion is: è colpa tua!
It’s your fault. You are not trying hard enough. You are not __________ enough.
Fill with the dark mantra of your choice.

No it’s not your fault. That’s how machines learn, or at least how they are supposed to. In fact, even AI, with all the computing power in the world, misleads, stalls, goes backward, gets lost. AI is not linear at all, so why should we?

Us humans work differently, despite what we sell ourselves.
Noi abbiamo bisogno di tempo.
We need time, time for observing, listening, asking questions, making mistakes, resting, processing and starting again without even knowing we are doing all this.

Our learning curve is made of sudden leaps, falls, long quiet pauses. Sometimes it really feels like taking steps back. We spend weeks feeling like we are making zero progress and then, one morning, a sentence flows out of our mouth, completely natural. And maybe the next day we are clumsy again.

Una spugna popped in my mind, a sponge.
It breathes liquids. It’s its nature to absorb. But a sponge has no will, no desires, no refusals, no accidents. And above all, it doesn’t have emotional blocks or fears.

A sponge doesn’t have a bad day.

Learning a language is a delicate, complex, and deeply intimate process. It touches something very raw inside us, because language is communication, aspiration, challenge, memories and desire. It’s emotion, it’s breath and blood.
That’s why a lesson is never just a lesson. È relazione.

We are two humans trying to build a space together, and in that space (if you are present) you can feel A LOT.

What I can feel from the very first ciao is the fatigue (or lack of) in the other person’s day, the worries, maybe things that happened just minutes before that don’t allow them to step easily into a bubble of complete attention, because their body-mind is full.

If we only needed a series of linear inputs, any language learning app would be more than enough. Instead we seek relationship, ‘cause it’s emotion that drives learning.
It decides whether we are a wall or a sponge that day.

Lou, in her poetic article, beautifully expresses that real understanding and long lasting change cannot be rushed, and that we shouldn’t force our expectations onto a reality that follows its own rules. We are not machines, and our path toward a new language or a new anything is never a neat diagram.

It is always an unpredictable, sometimes fragile, always beautifully human journey.

Very important PS
Lou’s I Will Think About You in Bed (her new Substack about design, branding, and finding beauty and meaning in the everyday) launch online event is tomorrow June 25th at 8 pm UK time, 9 PM our Italian time.

It’s a free event and it’s going to be remarkable. I know it in my bones!
Read more and register here.

See you there.

Baci!
B.

While the bus was bumping its way toward Fiumicino Aeroporto, last Thursday, to come to Porto where I am now, my eyes caught a small blue sign on the window: “Si prega di non ostruire il campo di visibilità del conducente.”

It’s an ordinary sign, the kind you pass by a thousand times. But as I read it, that single word, OSTRUIRE, started playing in my head.

Through my work with The Italian Reading Room, I have absorbed the unique vocal and emotional characteristics of my students.
It’s a beautiful phenomenon: I can look at a text and internally read it by switching from one voice to another, hearing and feeling the specific, distinct sound of each person. I love it.

So, reading ostruire, I could immediately hear exactly how they would face it. I heard someone’s hesitation on the s-t-r cluster, the struggle of another student with the ui sound, the joy of those who can now read it with confidence.
For my English-speaking students especially, that ascending diphthong is a challenge, they naturally tend to fuse the u and the i together, flattening them, rather than letting both vowels take space with their own distinct, open resonance.

I pictured them in my mind on that first attempt, hitting that complex str plus ui sound and falling short. Them I heard them choose to stop, take a breath and read it again, slowly. Con pazienza.

That second or third attempt is the most rewarding part of what I do, and it’s the moment where magic happens. When they stop rushing, trust non only themselves but also me and the space we have created, and let themselves create a different sound. Senza paura di sbagliare, because when you give yourself permission to make mistakes, everything shifts.

And when you combine that permission with the patience to search for the correct sound, without shame, without self-judgment nor rush… that is precisely when real learning begins. And fun starts.

See why I love it?

Last night I tumbled down a classic YouTube rabbit hole and stumbled upon one of those viral polyglot videos, recorded 7 years ago yet evergreen. It featured a 13-year-old girl casually juggling 20 different languages like she’s choosing flavors of gelato.

While thousands of people in the comments were dropping mind-blown emojis over her vocabulary, I found myself staring at something else entirely: her face.

Every time this beautiful girl switched languages, especially when she dove into Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese or German, her entire facial configuration went through a radical metamorphosis. Her jaw moved differently, her lips were more or less smiling, the physical space inside her mouth shifted, her breathing and her sound changed, resonating in different areas of the face and skull.
Even her posture transformed.
She wasn’t just switching words; she was putting on a whole new physical identity. She sounded almost flawless because she wasn’t afraid to let her muscles follow the shape of the sound.

The adult instead... Sure, brilliant polyglot who knows all the words.
But his face?

His muscle posture remained locked in his native sound default settings. He sounded almost exactly the same in every single language: stiff, flat, trapped.

He was treating each language almost like a box to check.
She was into each sound with a connected emotion, with embodiment. And for every language she spoke, she talked about having friends from that country.

Interest, curiosity, passion and love. This is what becomes sound.
Btw, follow her on IG, her name is (Cameron) Camila Farr and she is amazing.

The invisible shift

We’ve been subtly conditioned by language apps into believing that fluency is just an intellectual game of Tetris. Stack 5,000 words, memorize the subjunctive, don’t mess up the prepositions, and boom! you get a little green badge and a hit of dopamine.

But let’s be honest: one can have a C1 certificate in Italian and still sound like a GPS when asking: un cornetto e un cappuccino di soia per favore in Rome.

Why? Because squeezing a crisp, open, vibrant language into a tight rubbery box doesn’t work.

English is a beautifully protective language. You can speak it perfectly while barely moving your lips. It’s polite. It’s safe.

Italian, however, is an operatic animal. It demands space, vibration, small explosions and micro-jumps. It requires you to really soften the space inside your mouth and wake up facial muscles you probably haven’t used since you were a child.

If you try to speak Italian while keeping your native facial configuration, you haven’t really left the shore (to quote Juhmpa Lahiri’s In altre parole): you are still bathing with your floaty in low waters, near your confort native-language’s mainland.

The 13-year-old girl in the video intuitively gets what adults are probably too afraid to realize: to master a sound, you have to surrender your face to it, and play a different instrument. You have to separate yourself from the sound you are used to make, and adopt a new one without feeling ridiculous.

Giochiamo! Let’s find your Italian Voice.

If you’ve been studying Italian for years but still feel a slight disconnect when you open your mouth, the problem isn’t your brain. Your brain is doing great. It’s your muscle memory. You are trying to dance the tango while wearing a suit of armor.

Let’s break the ice in the comments, ok?

When you speak Italian, do you feel your face actually moving, or do you feel trapped in your native-jaw habits? Which sound feels like a physical obstacle for you?

If you prefer, you can also drop me a private message or a short audio clip via email at and I’ll get back to you.

I’m always around for a chat about Italian voice (and cornetto).

That’s a rather strange thing when you stop and think about it. Why should the sound of a stranger’s voice affect us so deeply?

Does it happen to you too?

Do you ever feel an immediate attraction to certain voices, or an equally immediate aversion? I certainly do. There are voices that make me lean in and listen, and others that make me want to leave the room. The same happens with sounds. I have always had an almost physical intolerance for the call of pigeons. That repetitive cru-cru seems to bypass reason entirely and go straight to my nervous system. It affects me almost more than the buzz of mosquitoes, which is saying quite a lot. Maybe it has something to do with frequencies. Perhaps some of us are simply more sensitive than others to particular vibrations, whether they come in the form of sound, light, colour or movement.

Whatever the explanation, these reactions are not intellectual. They happen fast. Before we have formed an opinion. Before we have had time to verify whether that person is interesting, trustworthy, annoying, charming, intelligent, or completely wrong, something in us has already responded.

It’s so fascinating the way we feel about voices. What are we responding to? A vocal memory of our past, and the emotions that memory carries? Those cultural vocal-biases I was writing about a few weeks ago? Frequency of vibrations? All the above?

I found myself circling around these questions again, while reading Adriana Cavarero’s A più voci (For more than one voice), a book that begins with a beautiful passage from Italo Calvino’s Un Re in ascolto (A King listens).
In Calvino’s story, a king spends his life listening to his kingdom. He listens to noises, footsteps, doors, whispers, words of vitreous coldness. His world is made of empty sounds that he - sleepless - keeps on monitoring like a human dish antenna.
One day he hears a woman singing a song of love. What captures him is actually not the woman, not even the song itself, but what Cavarero describes as "the pleasure this voice seems to take in existing as a voice. And that pleasure leads the king to imagine that the person herself might be as different from every other human being as her voice is from every other voice."

I have been carrying this idea with me like a charm, because it contains multiverses.

Some behave as if communication were just an exchange of information. Messages delivered. But we know that this is only one side of the story. Long before we decipher and evaluate someone’s explicit “message”, something else has already happened. We have felt them. And felt ourselves moving slightly closer or slightly further away.
The cause is in all the microscopic inner movements, or lack of them, that become sound, silence, breath.

Anyway, back to Earth, this is one of the reasons I have never been fully satisfied with approaches to language-learning that focus exclusively on vocabulary and grammar. And not even just mechanical pronunciation. All of those things matter a great deal. But they are not the whole picture. And if you read me before you already know how I feel about learning a language solely via AI.

This is exactly why I find a certain resonance with Cavarero’s book: what she talks about is not voice in isolation, it’s human relationship. A human voice only becomes meaningful because there is another human listening. The moment a voice leaves the body, it is already reaching toward another human being. Emotions becomes breath, breath becomes vibration, vibration becomes sound, sound swims in the air and touches another body. Evoking other emotions.

Perhaps this is why some voices stick to our flash and bones. We remember (actively or not) the voices that are connected with our feelings. And even if we do not remember a voice consciously, the feeling is somehow there when we hear a similar sound.

I know why I find Sting’s voice so soothing: because I associate it with a pivotal moment of my life, and a friend who’s presence helped a lot.
More mysterious is apparently why I instantly fell in love with Dino’s voice online, and I can’t seem to have enough. Even when he says silly things in a freaking Gollum’s voice that both scares the 3 yo in me, and makes me laugh like nothing else.

Who knows? Maybe it’s why Calvino’s king melts when he hears the woman singing, maybe it’s something else.

Cavarero argues that Western philosophy has spent centuries paying attention to meaning while largely ignoring the uniqueness of the voice itself. I can’t judge the entire history of philosophy, but I understand the intuition and I actually researched a lot about this topic. We often speak as though language were primarily about words and rationality.

In the beginning was the Word… well, not really.
Historically and for each of us, that’s fake news.

Our foundational years in our lives happen before words arrive. They happen in the space of the full body-mind and unconscious-consciousness fusion.

This is why kids (and adults!) love when we read aloud for them, when we create a bubble of pure presence. If we are upset or somewhere else, we can’t hide it.
But if we are whole, present, engaged, vibrating… they can feel us and resonate.

And we can feel them too.

This morning I picked up a book I first read twenty-five ish years ago: Dal mondo del pressappoco all’universo della precisione by Alexandre Koyré.

The original title is French: Du monde de l’à-peu-près à l’univers de la précision, but I have the Italian edition, translated by Paola Zambelli for Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi Scienza, and perhaps that matters too. Because pressappoco1 is a beautiful Italian word. Not quite “approximation.” Not quite “imprecision.” Something less technical and definitely more human.

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Koyré, who was born at the end of the nineteenth century and became one of the great historians of science of the twentieth, tried to understand the moment in which Western thought slowly moved from a world governed by approximation, practical experience and unstable measures into one increasingly organized around precision, calculation, scientific instruments, and exactitude. And what this transformation meant for humanity.

His focus was not simply the consequences of the invention of machines. He was describing a much deeper shift that took place between the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, when Europe gradually replaced a qualitative relationship with reality with a measurable and quantitative one. Mechanical clocks, astronomical observation, geometry, navigation, standardized measurement, mathematical physics: all these things contributed to changing not only science, but the structure of perception itself.

Modern machines did not simply extend human power. They reorganized human life around precision, around profit, around complete immersion in praxis.

Well, the book is actually far more complex and interesting than this. I am simplifying and I invite you to read the original text.

Anyway, while rereading Koyré, sipping a decaf on my balcony at seven-something in the morning, still under the emotional waves of a conversation I had yesterday with an visual artist friend, who lives in Portugal and is losing jobs because of AI… I kept having the strange sensation that our present techno-(il)logical moment has something deeply in common with what happened during the Industrial Revolution and discussed about in the book.

AI is presented to us as this know-it-all superbrain. But in practice, it often feels like a messy toddler with the syndrome of The Flash.

The danger is that it’s not always obviously wrong. Most of the time, it sounds plausible.
AI gives us plausible texts, plausible translations, plausible summaries, plausible research, plausible connect-the-dots content and crazy fantasy images. Almost perfect, yet nowhere near reliable enough to be left alone.
Is this bad or, in. fact, good? Is this “almost” what is actually saving us now?

I think so.

At least, at the level most of us are actively and passively consuming AI now, “the machine” appears to reduce human effort while simultaneously demanding a completely new level of cognitive vigilance. We are constantly questioning, checking, correcting, reformulating, supervising and checking again.
We know we can no longer trust anything without digging deeper and fact-check the fact-check. But maybe this is what’s saving us.

Human approximation has always been embodied, and somehow we can live with it.
It belongs to hesitation, intuition, tone of voice (of course), gesture, partial understanding, feeling: the slow and imperfect process through which experience becomes thought.

AI approximation is different. It does not emerge from lived experience in the world, but from… what? Probability? Pattern recognition? Statistical prediction?
Often AI simply makes things up, and when you point it out, it cheerfully replies: “Oh, you’re right!”

I KNOW!

This is why AI-generated content feels both accurate and empty, if not ridiculous, at the same time. What if/when people will not feel this dissonance anymore?

I keep thinking of Charlie Chaplin being swallowed by the massive gears of Modern Times. I wonder what he would do today.

I wonder what he would say about the industrialization of approximation: a system capable of producing plausible (sometimes deliberately false) meaning at enormous scale and extraordinary speed, changing language, changing culture, steering us toward a faster universe made of infinite layers of pressappoco, while leaving so many artists, thinkers, scientists, researchers, and skilled workers behind.

The Industrial Revolution did not completely reduce labor; it transformed the pace and perspectives of human life. And it created 50 different shades of slavery. Something similar may now be happening.

Continuous discernment is tiring.

Living surrounded by systems that sound convincing without being fully trustworthy is tiring. And no one wants to feel tired all the time. This is what tech is for, after all, to make life easier. So how about let things go?
How about trust completely or not trusting at all?
How about just enjoy simple sensations that last one second?

How tempting it becomes to stop questioning.
This is why many of us feel simultaneously empowered and exhausted, excited and scared.

I wonder whether one of the hidden consequences of AI will be the erosion of something profoundly human: our (already thin) trust in others, our relationship with uncertainty, with imperfect presence, with the slow process of understanding.
Our right to think, to ask questions, to change our mind before producing anything.

The right to remain sospesi long enough for thoughts, feelings, and actions to happen.

My question is not whether AI will become really intelligent. It is what will happen to us tomorrow, when pressapoco will be the new precision.

PS if you want me to read aloud this book or others, for you, let’s make it happen.

I started with Adam Aleksic talking about social media and language, then somehow, four or five teds later, I ended up listening to Jason Rugolo speaking about audio computers, psychoacoustics, and something called second-person neuroscience.

I stopped exercising, grabbed a post-it, and quickly wrote them down before I forgot. Then I finished my exercises, opened my laptop, and started googling.

What struck me immediately was not the feeling of discovering something completely new. I actually had the sensation that this research was circling around questions that already belong deeply to my world: voice, listening, emotional presence, language learning, human interaction.

The more I searched, the more I felt there was something important there.

One of the studies described how infants exposed to a foreign language through live interaction learned new phonetic sounds, while infants exposed to exactly the same sounds through video recordings did not. Same language. Same sounds. Different result.

Another study looked at what happens between teacher and learner during real-time interaction. Researchers observed forms of neural coupling between the two participants, especially in areas connected to timing, prediction, speech and coordination. But honestly, the most interesting part for me was not the neuroscience vocabulary. It was the human dynamic underneath it.

The researchers kept returning to ideas like reciprocity, adaptation, feedback, timing, coordination. In other words: two people continuously adjusting to one another.

And this is where my thoughts started jumping pop-corn style.

Because if language is shaped by interaction, then interaction also shapes language. Not only the words we use, but the sound of them. The rhythm. The speed. The emotional temperature. The things we avoid saying. The things we invent new words for.

I notice this all the time with my boyfriend, Dino, who’s from the UK. I’m probably the one absorbing the most. Sometimes I suddenly hear myself saying things in English exactly the way he says them. Not only certain expressions, but timing, intonation, emphasis. Tiny shifts I don’t consciously decide to make.

And it makes me wonder how much of language is actually this: people continuously reshaping one another through repeated exposure, attention, affection, rhythm, and shared environments.

Adam Aleksic talks about how social media users reshape language to escape algorithmic censorship. Words get altered, softened, disguised, abbreviated. Then the platforms themselves amplify those new forms through virality, repetition and visibility, until eventually they spill out of the internet and into ordinary speech. At some point people are no longer adapting language only to other human beings. They are adapting language to algorithms. And algorithms, in return, begin influencing the evolution of language itself.

I find this fascinating because it raises much larger questions than “internet slang.”

What kind of language emerges from a certain environment? What kind of emotional life survives inside that language? What happens when speed becomes more valuable than silence, when visibility starts influencing vocabulary, when compression becomes a social instinct?

And then I thought: maybe cultures are shaped not only by ideas and history, but also by the sound of the spoken language/dialect, the way people speak.

By prosody.
By rhythm.
By interruption.
By acceleration.
By how long people wait before responding.
By how comfortably silence can exist between two people.

Maybe the sound of a language slowly influences the emotional habits of the people who speak it. Not in a rigid deterministic way, but subtly, continuously, over generations. Maybe a fast language changes the perception of time. Maybe a highly melodic language changes the relationship with emotional expression. Maybe languages full of diminutives create different textures of intimacy. Maybe some languages allow uncertainty to exist more softly, while others push everything toward clarity and assertion.

“Arrival” is one of my favourite films when it comes to language and thought. So much so that I bought the Blu-ray disc because I became slightly obsessed with it, and all the making-of content behind it.

For those who haven’t seen it, the story revolves around a linguist learning an alien language that slowly changes her perception of time itself. It’s science fiction, of course (based on Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life), but maybe part of what makes the idea feel so powerful is that it feels not only familiar but really possible.
At least to me.

Anyone who has deeply entered another language knows that language can alter much more than vocabulary. It can shift rhythm, perception, emotional posture, even the way silence feels.

And maybe that’s because language is never just a neutral system for exchanging information. Maybe every language also carries hidden assumptions about attention, emotion, intimacy, authority, time, politeness, conflict. Maybe each language subtly trains the body differently: how quickly to respond, how directly to speak, how much space to leave between words, how comfortable we become with interruption, softness, ambiguity, openness, emphasis, vulnerability.

I sometimes wonder whether this is why entering another language can feel so emotionally disorienting at first. Not because we lack grammar, but because we are temporarily stepping into another relational atmosphere.

Another way of showing our humanity.

And the more I think about it, the less interested I become in simplistic conversations about whether AI is “good” or “bad” for language learning. The more interesting question, for me, is what happens to language when the environments shaping it are no longer primarily human.

What happens when our interlocutors are also platforms, recommendation systems, predictive text, algorithms trained to optimise engagement?

How does the sound of a culture change when its conversational ecosystems change?

And what happens to us when the soundscape around us changes too?

Anyway, I’m happy I fell into this rabbit hole today. These kinds of reflections bring me back to a mental place I love being in, where language is constantly moving and reshaping our life.

And since I am happy, I thought I’d leave you with something playful.

A small “acoustic creature”: Il Lonfo by Fosco Maraini, one of the most brilliant pieces of linguistic nonsense ever written in Italian. Proof that the human brain keeps searching for meaning, emotion, texture and intention even when words stop behaving as usual. Enjoy.

One of the things that fascinates me most while working on Italian prosody with adults is discovering how differently people listen to language.

Some people hear rhythm almost immediately. Others remain focused almost entirely on meaning. Some become sensitive very quickly to tension, breath and musicality, while others can live for decades inside a language without ever truly listening to its sound.

And I don’t mean listening emotionally or musically. I mean acoustically.

We were all taught to understand, to translate, to communicate, to survive. When we study a foreign language we learn how to order food, respond to basic needs, solve small problems, express simple concepts. And often this is enough to build an entire life inside another country. But something very subtle sometimes remains untouched: the physical familiarity with the sound itself. The confidence.

I know, I insist talking about the body.
But what is voice if not body and emotion?

I have worked with many people whose Italian, often learned as a second or third language, is perfectly functional and yet still feels somehow assembled, like an IKEA bookshelf. It works, of course. But where is the melody, the rhythm, the design?

Very often, the voice remains organized around another linguistic structure still living underneath Italian. Sometimes I can almost visualize it: a dense grid of a technical drawing. The Italian sound tries to expand freely through the body, but part of its movement remains subtly constrained by the older architecture beneath it.

This is why, during my lessons, I spend so much time slowing

people down acoustically.

We read aloud con calma. We taste each vowel. We give time to rhythm to form and become second nature. Sometimes I ask students to repeat the same sentence a few times, not to shape it mechanically, but to allow their vocal muscle memory (as I call it) to grow, to let their ear develop.

I read first. I ask them to notice where the sound opens, where it accelerates, where it softens, where the breath naturally falls. Little by little, the ear begins reorganizing itself internally.

And when that happens, the grid starts fading, the sound moves differently.
More freely. More alive.

Their reading changes too. The mechanical rhythm of someone decoding language word by word slowly dissolves. Another movement starts emerging underneath: anticipation, musicality, breath, emotional direction. The language stops sounding fragmented and begins to flow.

This is also why I visualize their sound while listening to them.

In the same session a voice can start by being angular, geometric, sharp. Then change into drops, curls, waves. Some sentences are vertical empty rectangles, others expand into colorful clouds. Certain rhythms create tension before I even consciously understand why. Sometimes I feel that I can almost see where a sound is resisting itself physically inside the body.

And I can definitely see the breath.

This is what I love most about working with my students: the moment when the sound of words stop being mechanic and begins becoming alive in someone else’s body.

I think many people imagine pronunciation as something cosmetic or mannered, as though working on sound simply meant polishing the surface of language. But sound changes comprehension itself. It changes the way words connect to one another, the way meaning flows through a sentence, the way emotion travels inside speech.

The more physically familiar a language becomes, the more naturally the mind begins anticipating rhythm, meaning and emotional direction all at once.
Listening becomes less effortful. Speech becomes less defended, and maybe this is why some people suddenly improve after years of vocal stagnation.

It happens when, con calma, the ear finally opens to another composition of sound.

I’m always curious to hear how other people perceive language, rhythm and voice.
I’d be glad to hear from you.

There was a brief silence after that word.

Then she tried again, slowly this time. The vowels opened differently. The rhythm changed. And I remember having the strange sensation that I was no longer witnessing someone studying a language, but someone beginning to feel it, physically.

That moment stayed with me long after the lesson ended.

Over the past months, since I opened the world of TIRR to foreign students, many of the people who have come to work with me arrived fascinated by sound before anything else. They were drawn to the musicality of Italian, to pronunciation, to rhythm, to the possibility of sounding more natural and more alive inside the language. And yet, most of them did not have the kind of linguistic mastery that, theoretically, should come before this type of work. On paper, they should probably still be concentrating primarily on grammar, vocabulary and structure before dedicating themselves to resonance, timing and vocal nuance.

For a long time, I believed this too.

I thought prosody belonged mostly to advanced speakers, to people who had already built a solid enough relationship with the language to finally begin refining its sound. Lately, through most of these lessons, I have started questioning that assumption more and more deeply. Because what I am witnessing has very little to do with perfection.

What moves me is watching the moment in which someone begins developing intimacy with the sound itself.

Recently, during one lesson in particular, I became aware of this with unusual clarity. The student I was working with has a very disciplined and pragmatic personality. Methodical, precise, not someone who would naturally enjoy occupying space through sound. And yet, little by little, I could feel something changing in the way the language was passing through his body. Certain vowels remained open slightly longer. The rhythm stopped rushing forward. The voice no longer seemed to arrive entirely from the mind.

At the beginning of our work together, pronunciation errors would often pass completely unnoticed. The reading moved forward mechanically, word after word, with the slightly rigid rhythm that many adults develop when they are concentrating primarily on decoding. The voice remained busy surviving the text.

Now something very different is beginning to happen.

Sometimes, in the middle of a sentence, the student pauses spontaneously. A small doubt appears. The rhythm slows down naturally, as though the ear itself were beginning to wake up from inside the language. And what fascinates me is that this hesitation is not a sign of insecurity. It is a sign of listening.
The voice is beginning to listen to itself.

This, to me, is one of the most extraordinary moments in language learning. Because it means the person is no longer relying only on external correction. A new form of familiarity is slowly emerging. Or perhaps, more precisely, a growing sensitivity to non-familiarity whenever the sound moves away from the internal rhythm of the language.

And once this starts happening, reading changes completely.

The mechanical sound of someone decoding language word by word slowly begins dissolving. In its place, another rhythm emerges: the rhythm of someone following meaning, anticipation, emotional direction. The sentence starts moving organically instead of mechanically. The language stops sounding assembled and starts sounding inhabited.

It happened yesterday again, and it was so beautiful to watch/hear that I felt the need to write about it. Watching this happen feels less like correcting someone and more like watching form emerge gradually from inside the language itself. You cannot rush it. You can only accompany it attentively enough for it to happen.

I think this is one of the reasons why working on voice can become such a profound experience for adults. Because unlike grammar, sound immediately involves the body. You cannot truly transform the rhythm of a language while remaining completely defended inside yourself. At some point, something has to loosen: the jaw, of course! The breath, yes. But also the fear of sounding unfamiliar to yourself.

And perhaps this is why some people become deeply attached to a foreign language long before they fully master it intellectually. Not because they understand everything, but because they begin recognizing themselves differently inside the sound.

People rarely transform through grammar alone. Grammar can organize a language, certainly. It can make communication possible. But sound does something else. Sound creates emotional proximity. It creates the strange sensation that a language is no longer simply something to study, but a space one slowly stops resisting.

Adriana Cavarero writes that every human voice carries something irreducibly unique long before words themselves are fully understood. During some sessions with my students, I experience exactly that. There are moments in which the voice stops merely functioning and begins carrying the full weight of a person’s attention, hesitation, listening and presence.

And, what i find amazing is that this transformation does not always happen first in the most emotionally expressive people. Actually, it shows more vividly in those who appear the most “contained”. Perhaps because controlled people feel, more than others, the exhausting effort of remaining constantly organized inside.

When sound finally begins moving more freely through their body, the experience can become unexpectedly intense. And when it happens, I realize I am far more moved than I expected.

A personal note about this, in Italian.

I’d love to hear from you.

There are people whose voice seems to arrive in a room before the meaning of their words does. It is not necessarily a matter of volume, confidence or extroversion; rather, it is the sensation that the sound has somewhere to resonate, that it occupies the air naturally and reaches us with a certain physical presence. Others, on the contrary, seem to reduce the sound before it has even fully emerged from the body. You hear it in the compressed vowels, in the breath held too high in the chest, in the jaw that barely moves, in the strange haste with which some sentences collapse before they have really had the time to exist.

As a prosody coach, I often encounter this phenomenon in advanced learners of Italian. Many of them possess an excellent command of the language: their grammar is precise, their vocabulary even sophisticated, their syntax perfectly functional.
And yet, while speaking, something retreats. It is as though the voice itself were still asking permission to inhabit the language.

Italian makes this particularly visible because it is not a language that hides easily. It asks the body to participate. It requires space inside the mouth, a certain descent of the breath, a vertical openness of the vowels. In a way that is difficult to explain to those who have never worked physically with the voice, Italian refuses to remain purely cerebral. It constantly reveals the relationship between sound and body.

This is one of the reasons why some highly educated professionals, despite speaking fluently, continue to sound somehow “contracted” in Italian. Many have spent years learning how to reduce their sonic presence in order to appear efficient, agreeable, controlled, non-invasive. Sometimes they speak as if they were folding themselves inward. The voice remains trapped near the teeth and never fully reaches the space outside, as though resonance itself had become something excessive.

And often, this has very little to do with language learning.

We all receive, throughout life, subtle instructions about how much space we are allowed to occupy. Some people grow up in environments where interruption feels dangerous; others learn very early that being “too loud” risks humiliation, rejection or ridicule. Over time, the body adapts through posture, rhythm, breathing patterns and muscular tension.

Sometimes this adaptation becomes surprisingly visible when we speak another language. Many people are not only afraid of sounding incorrect; they are also afraid of sounding “too correct,” too intentional, too transformed. I have met Italians who continue speaking English with a very strong accent because sounding more fluent would make them feel pretentious, artificial. As if a more accurate pronunciation might expose them to the accusation of “showing off,” of wanting to appear superior or foreign to their own social group.

And so the voice remains suspended in a strange middle territory: competent enough to communicate, but never fully allowed to inhabit the new sound.

The voice, after all, is never just sound: it is also biography.

This is why I believe that working deeply on a foreign language can become a profoundly human experience. Because when we reshape a voice, we are often renegotiating our relationship with presence itself: the space we allow ourselves to occupy, the degree to which we permit ourselves to resonate, to be heard, to sound transformed without feeling excessive.

In Italian, this transformation can become extraordinarily tangible. Consider the difference between two people pronouncing the same sentence: “Ho bisogno di dirti una cosa.” One voice rushes slightly, as though trying not to occupy too much space; the other allows the vowels to open, the breath to descend and the sound to linger for a moment longer in the air. The words are identical, but the presence is completely different.

This is not theatre, nor performance in the traditional sense. It is something more intimate and more relational than that. It concerns the invisible connection between breath and identity, between resonance and dignity, between the physicality of sound and our ability to feel legitimately present in front of another human being.

One of the most moving moments in my work happens when a student suddenly stops trying to “push” the language and begins allowing the sound to exist physically.
The jaw softens, the vowels open, the rhythm slows down, and for a brief moment the voice stops merely functioning and starts inhabiting space. Not perfect space, not performative space: simply warm human space.

Perhaps this is why so many people remain suspended between fluency and restraint.

Not because they cannot pronounce the language,
but because every transformed voice carries the risk of becoming visible.

And the voice, after all, is a form of exposure.

(Una breve riflessione, in Italiano.)

If you wish to work on your Italian Voice with me, you can contact me directly.

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[EN] In The Italian Reading Room, we explore the voice as it unfolds. To do so, we need to be aware of a fundamental dimension: what happens a moment before the sound. In Japan, absolute silence in manga is rendered by the onomatopoeia Shiiin (しーん). Introduced by the legendary Osamu Tezuka, this word does not indicate a “void,” but a vibrant presence—a silence so dense it is almost audible.

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IT - Per un educatore o un lettore, lo shiiin è il momento della pre-visualizzazione. La scienza conferma che immaginare il suono prima di emetterlo ottimizza la risposta motoria dell’apparato fonatorio. Questo riduce il “filtro affettivo”1, ovvero la barriera emotiva che blocca la fluidità del nostro parlato, specialmente in una lingua straniera.

[EN] For an educator or a reader, shiiin is the moment of pre-visualization. Science confirms that imagining the sound before emitting it optimizes the motor response of the phonatory system. This reduces the “affective filter”, the emotional barrier that blocks fluency when we speak, especially in a foreign language.

IT - Studi sul “Production Effect”2 dimostrano che leggere ad alta voce aiuta immensamente, perché potenzia la memoria, ma la qualità di questa produzione dipende dalla consapevolezza pre-vocale. Abitare lo shiiin significa dare al cervello il tempo di “scolpire” la parola nella mente e nel corpo prima di farla uscire.

[EN] Studies on the “Production Effect” (MacLeod et al., 2010) show that reading aloud is of great help, since it enhances memory, but the quality of this production depends on pre-vocal awareness. Inhabiting shiiin means giving the brain time to “sculpt” the word in the mind and the body before letting it out.

IT - Questa filosofia del vuoto trova la sua massima espressione tecnica nella pratica del taiko, il tamburo giapponese. Qui, il silenzio è governato dal concetto di Ma (間): lo spazio vivo tra un colpo e l’altro. Per un percussionista, il Ma non è un’interruzione, ma l’origine stessa della potenza. Il suono non nasce dal braccio che colpisce la pelle, ma dall’intenzione che si accumula in quel silenzio carico di tensione. Senza lo spazio del Ma, il ritmo diventerebbe rumore; è la pausa che permette alla vibrazione di espandersi e all’ascoltatore di accoglierla.

[EN] This philosophy of emptiness finds its ultimate technical expression in the practice of taiko, the Japanese drum. Here, silence is governed by the concept of Ma (間): the living space between one beat and the next. For a drummer, Ma is not an interruption but the very origin of power. The sound is not born from the arm striking the drumhead, but from the intention that builds up in that tension-filled silence. Without the space of Ma, rhythm would become noise; it is the pause that allows the vibration to expand and the listener to receive it.

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IT - Quindi… non rincorrete la parola: godetevi prima il silenzio. Immaginate la rotondità di una “O” italiana, o la lama di una “Z”, in quel millesimo di secondo di quiete. La voce non sarà più un riflesso, ma una creazione.

[EN] So.. don’t chase the word: first enjoy the silence. Imagine the roundness of an Italian “O” or the blade of a “Z”, in that millisecond of stillness. Your voice will no longer be a reflex, but a creation.

IT - È interessante notare che l’onomatopea shiiin fu introdotta da Osamu Tezuka non per indicare una mancanza di rumore, ma per descrivere un momento di tensione psicologica totale. Nella lettura a voce alta, questo si traduce nel passaggio dalla reazione all’azione: leggiamo (a voce alta) con padronanza perché abbiamo dato al suono il tempo di nascere nella mente.

[EN] It is worth noting that the onomatopoeia shiiin was introduced by Osamu Tezuka not to indicate a lack of noise, but to describe a moment of total psychological tension. In reading aloud, this translates into the transition from reaction to action: we master reading (aloud) because we have given the sound time to be born in the mind.

IT - Abitare lo shiiin significa quindi riappropriarsi della meccanica del respiro e della forma dei fonemi prima che diventino aria. È il momento in cui il corpo si allinea con l’intenzione della parola. In quel silenzio, noi non siamo muti: stiamo semplicemente accordando lo strumento.

[EN] Inhabiting shiiin thus means reclaiming the mechanics of breath and the shape of phonemes before they become air. It is the moment when the body aligns with the word’s intention. In that silence, we are not mute: we are simply tuning the instrument.

sostieni la mia ricerca

Facci caso: la configurazione della bocca di un bravo divulgatore italiano o di una attrice autorevole, mentre parla, non è mai troppo allargata. È piuttosto ampia, e mobile sull’asse verticale.

Molti dei miei studenti invece (specialmente chi è di madrelingua inglese) tendono a parlare con una bocca estremamente “tirata” sull’asse orizzontale. In sostanza, sorridono mentre parlano. Il che è bellissimo, don’t get me wrong, ma questa tensione delle labbra, portato all’estremo, ha un pessimo effetto sulle nostre vocali: le schiaccia, tende ad alzare il tono della voce e rende il suono italiano rigido, quasi metallico.

Italian is a vertical language. It needs height, not width.

Per avere un suono più naturale, elegantemente italiano, bisogna imparare a “creare spazio” dietro i denti, a lasciare che la lingua possa muoversi e vibrare. Se parli stirando troppo la lingua (e schiacciandola troppo spesso sul palato), irrigidisci le guance e le tue vocali (che sono 7, nel parlato) perdono chiarezza.

Sculpting the vertical space: la “O” di Giotto

Immagina di voler disegnare la “O” perfetta di Giotto, ma di doverla fare con la tua cavità orale. Se le tue labbra tirano verso le orecchie (il sorriso), la tua “O” diventerà un’ellisse piatta e uscirà una “o/a”.

Proviamo a scolpire insieme il contrasto con la nostra frase-test:

“Voglio dare forma all’oro della mia voce, per abitare un nuovo suono.”

The horizontal sound: prova a leggere questa frase sorridendo molto, come se fossi in uno spot pubblicitario. Senti come le ‘O’ suonano piccole? È un suono gentile, forse, ma “povero”. Non c’è risonanza. E poi, diciamocelo, sembri un ventriloquo!

The vertical sound: ora, immagina di avere in bocca una pallina da golf, anzi no, una grande caramella sferica. Ecco, mangiala e ricordane lo spazio ora lasciato vuoto.
Lascia che la mandibola cada dolcemente verso il basso, senza sforzarla, come se ti stessi addormentando e il viso lasciasse andare la tensione del giorno. Mantieni le labbra morbide. Adesso leggi a voce alta la stessa frase, lasciando che il suono riempia lo spazio lasciato dalla caramella, prima di uscire.

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🎧 Audio sample: ascolta la differenza

In questo audio, ti faccio ascoltare una piccola ma significativa trasformazione.
Presta attenzione a come cambia il volume e la ricchezza del suono tra il secondo 0:40 e il minuto 1:20. Non ho alzato il volume del microfono: è la verticalità che crea potenza.

Il mio lavoro non è solo aiutare a correggere la pronuncia, ma insegnare a raffinare la “propriocezione”, ovvero la capacità di percepire e riconoscere la posizione del proprio corpo nello spazio. In questo caso la posizione della lingua, della bocca e della mandibola, il fluire del respiro, la presenza o assenza di tensioni nel collo, ecc., così che chi lavora con me possa creare e abbellire la sua nuova Voce italiana.

Scolpire il suono: your weekly exercise.
Leggi a voce alta questo articolo, metti una mano sotto il mento.
Senti se la tua mandibola si muove verso il basso, o se rimane (troppo) stabile.
Se la senti poco mobile, aprila di più, leggendo LEN TA MEN TE.

Ricorda: la musica dell’Italiano non sta sulle tue labbra, ma nello spazio che riesci a creare nella bocca perché il suono si formi.

Don’t just smile at the language. Open your mouth and let its resonance out.

Buona Voce Italiana!

Each of us carries an invisible archive of voices, within. Not an organized collection, not something we can consciously access at will. More like a layering, built over time through encounters, relationships and the way we processed them.

There are voices we have loved and voices that have hurt us.
Voices that passed by quietly, without leaving a clear memory, and yet - somehow - they remain. If I try to recall the voice of someone I loved many years ago, I often can’t reconstruct it precisely. I don’t remember the exact tone, or the words they used.
But I remember how their voice - often connected with their eyes -made me feel.

And that memory stays.

So, when we listen to someone speaking, we are not just listening to that person,
we are listening to everything their voice awakens in us, consciously or not!
Our body responds before our mind.
An immediate sense of openness, or an “inexplicable” resistance.
A feeling of instinctive trust or revulsion we can’t quite explain.

It happens within a gazillionth of a second, almost always without our awareness.

Those who study the voice know this very well: the brain doesn’t register only what is said, but HOW it is said. Intonation, rhythm, and EMOTIONAL quality engage our affective system directly. Actually, long before we register the actual content of the speech.

This is why a voice can calm us or put us on alert, even when we don’t understand the words. And don’t get me started on the importance of that first gut feeling… this is for another article.

Voice is not only language, it’s breath, it’s emotion, hence it’s relationship.

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And there is another layer, even more subtle.

We don’t only carry the voices of the people we’ve met, we also carry a cultural and social perception of a voice.

Follow me here.

Across time, certain vocal qualities have been associated with specific values.
For a long time - in Western cultures - deeper, steady male voices were linked to authority and reliability: think of radio announcers, public speakers, the voices that “knew-and-told”. Still today, many leaders believe they have to adopt a certain pitch to be considered leaders, despite what they say.

In the 50’s, high-pitched, bright female voices (the “smiling voices”) were perceived as appropriate, acceptable, elegant. While having a rough deep voice would immediately give the vulgar vibe. Well, that changed radically since the the 70’s and 80’s. Remember Kathleen Turner in “Body heat”? There you go.

So you see, it’s not nature. It’s culture.
And culture changes.

It shifts across time, across geographies, across social contexts.

And without realizing it, we internalize these models, and we judge others (and ourselves too!) based on these biases.
Oh yes!

When we listen to someone, we are never just listening to their voice.
We are listening to our personal history, the emotions we’ve lived,
the culture we’ve absorbed, the voices we’ve learned to recognize as dear,
and those we’ve learned to keep at a distance.

Want to try a fun game? Next time you are in a crowd, in a shop, on a bus, close your eyes, listen to someone who is speaking and try to make their portrait in your mind. Then open your eyes and see it the visual correspond to their sound.
I’m telling you, we have voice biases for every voice, even for animals’ voices! Have you ever heard the bark of a dog and think: it doesn’t match their look?
See?

Now, the first question I ask to my (bravest) students who want to make this research with me (actually I let them play, so I ask a different question, but you’ll find out if you come working with me. Anyway the core is): what is our relationship with our own voice?
Because our voice too lives in this archive.
It has been heard, judged, distorted. Encouraged or silenced.

The voice we use is (consciously or not) the best we could build so far, in order to…
be loved? Be accepted?
By whom?

Yeah I know, questions questions!

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So… when I work as a prosody coach, I see this all the time.

When someone wants to truly work with their voice they are not just improving pronunciation. And again: I propose this work only to a selected few of my students, and NEVER at the beginning of our path together, since they are eventually entering into contact with their deep vocal universe, made of memories, emotions, discoveries.

Sometimes those memories are gentle. Quite always they are fragile.
Sometimes they can be even painful.

But they’re always alive, working in the background, changing the way we breath, the way we sound, the way we express ourselves (or not entirely).
And it’s always wonderful to see how a liberated voice can impact our life all around. Not just in learning how to sound Italian, but how to sound our reborn selves.

One of these days I will tell you the story of a group of 6 people (5 of them were MEN, a miracle!) who attended a 6-months intensive program called “Voce Libera Tutti”, which I created with my dear friend Eleonora Aleotti, a soprano singer. Let me tell you: we saw AMAZING transformations there, from silent/shy/superbiased, to liberated, fun, bold voices!

That’s for another time too.

As Roland Barthes once wrote,
we do not only hear a voice, we hear its “grain”… something physical, irreducible, deeply human.

So, this is why I love working with voices in The Italian Reading Room.
Creating a space where each voice can be heard, can express and, most importantly, can PLAY to find all its potential.

A space where listening is presence.

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🎧 Listen to the Italian version, read by me — part of my ‘Relax & Learn’ audio series.

Same AUDIO but in a video format, with subtitles in Italian.

We often treat learning a language as a purely mental exercise, a collection of rules and symbols to decipher. But after years of working with the voice, I’ve learned that a language is, above all, a physical experience. It’s a postural shift.
Recent linguistics research1 confirms what who works with their voice have always known: reading aloud is the bridge that turns a “mental” language into a “physical” one. It’s about building confidence through the breath.

Spesso trattiamo l’apprendimento di una lingua come un esercizio puramente mentale: una collezione di regole e simboli da decifrare. Ma dopo anni di lavoro sulla voce, ho capito che una lingua è, prima di tutto, un’esperienza fisica. È un cambiamento posturale.
Recenti ricerche linguistiche confermano ciò che chiunque lavori con la voce ha sempre saputo: leggere a voce alta è il ponte che trasforma una lingua “mentale” in una lingua “fisica”. Si tratta di costruire la propria sicurezza attraverso il respiro.

However, there is a hidden risk in practicing alone. Without a guide, we often repeat the same acoustic patterns, unknowingly crystallizing our native accent into the new words. Science suggests that reading aloud, as a tool to learn another language, needs so called mirroring You need a professional ear to help you notice where the sound gets stuck, whether it’s a tight jaw or a tongue that hasn’t yet found its Italian configuration. It’s not just about correcting sounds; it’s about mapping a new resonance.

Tuttavia, c’è un rischio nascosto nel fare pratica da soli. Senza una guida, spesso ripetiamo gli stessi schemi acustici, cristallizzando inconsapevolmente il nostro accento nativo nelle nuove parole. La scienza suggerisce che la lettura ad alta voce, come strumento per imparare una lingua straniera, ha bisogno del cosiddetto mirroring. Serve un orecchio professionale che ti aiuti a sentire dove il suono si blocca: se è una mascella troppo contratta o una lingua che non ha ancora trovato la sua configurazione italiana. Non si tratta solo di correggere suoni, ma di mappare una nuova risonanza.

This is the core of what I do in The Italian Reading Room. I move away from the traditional listen and repeat of single words, to embrace a well established method: I treat the text as a score and my student’s body as the instrument. When you read with me, you aren’t just reciting; you are training your listening skills first, and then your muscles… to play the proper Italian sound.

Questo è il cuore di ciò che faccio con The Italian Reading Room. Io non mi fermo al tradizionale ascolta-e-ripeti di singole parole, io applico un metodo consolidato: considero il testo come uno spartito e il corpo dello studente come lo strumento. Quando leggi con me, non stai solo recitando: stai allenando innanzitutto la tua capacità di ascolto, e poi i tuoi muscoli… a “suonare” correttamente la lingua italiana.

The voices of our past: memories and emotions

Le voci del nostro passato: memorie ed emozioni

There is one final element we often forget: our voice is a map of our history. When we speak, we evoke memories, we give voice to fears, we embody emotional traumas. How much do our past emotions condition the sound of our present? This is a deep, fascinating territory that I research about with my bravest students. I’ll tell you more in my next article.

C’è un ultimo elemento che spesso dimentichiamo: la nostra voce è una mappa della nostra storia. Quando parliamo, evochiamo ricordi, diamo voce alle paure, incarniamo traumi emotivi. Quanto le nostre emozioni passate condizionano il suono del nostro presente? Questo è un territorio profondo e affascinante su cui faccio ricerca insieme ai miei studenti più coraggiosi. Ve ne parlerò meglio nel mio prossimo articolo.

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In the traditional teaching of the Italian language, we are told there are five vowels: A, E, I, O, U. But for those of us who work with the voice, this is only part of the truth. Today, I want to take you inside the “engine room” of our pronunciation, where geometry meets sound.

Nell’insegnamento tradizionale della lingua italiana, ci viene detto che le vocali sono cinque: A, E, I, O, U. Ma per chi lavora con la voce, questa è solo una parte della verità. Oggi voglio portarvi dentro la “sala macchine” della nostra pronuncia, dove la geometria incontra il suono.

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In Italian, there are seven vowel phonemes. In addition to A, I, and U, we must distinguish between the é (closed e, as in “fede”) and the è (open e as in “festa”), and between the ó (closed o as in “Sole”) and the ò (open o as in “notte”). This tonal variety is what makes Italian so vibrant.

In italiano esistono sette fonemi vocalici. Oltre alla A, I e U, dobbiamo distinguere tra la é (e chiusa come in “fede”) e la è (e aperta come in “festa”), e tra la ó (o chiusa come in “Sole”) e la ò (o aperta come in “notte”). Questa varietà timbrica è ciò che rende l’italiano così vibrante.

The vowel triangle is the map of the space the tongue occupies in the mouth. At the top, we find the “close” vowels (I, U), where the tongue is near the roof of the mouth. As we move down toward the A, the jaw relaxes and the mouth opens completely. It is a true exercise in physical architecture.

Il triangolo vocalico è la mappa dello spazio che la lingua occupa nella bocca. In alto troviamo le vocali “strette” (I, U), dove la lingua è vicina al palato. Man mano che scendiamo verso la A, la mandibola si rilassa e la bocca si apre completamente. È un vero e proprio esercizio di architettura fisica.

As a Prosody Coach, I often see students who tend to “flatten” this triangle. If we don’t give these seven sounds the right space, our voice becomes monotonic. Inhabiting these seven vowels means giving your communication new colors and clearer sound.

Come Prosody Coach, vedo spesso studenti che tendono a “appiattire” questo triangolo. Se non diamo il giusto spazio a questi sette suoni, la nostra voce diventa monocorde. Abitare queste sette vocali significa dare alla propria comunicazione nuovi colori e una maggiore chiarezza del suono.

Today’s exercise / L’esercizio del giorno:

Try pronouncing in sequence: i - é (closed) - è (open) - a.
Can you feel how the jaw gradually drops? It’s your Italian Voice coming to life.

Prova a pronunciare in sequenza: i - é (chiusa) - è (aperta) - a.
Senti come la mandibola scende gradualmente? È la tua Voce italiana che prende vita.


Want to work on your sound? If you feel it’s time to stop reading theory and want to start sculpting your voice with a tailor-made journey, subscribe to the newsletter. But don’t stop there, send me a message. I’ll be happy to have a conversation with you to see how I can help you find your most authentic Italian Voice, through 1:1 coaching sessions.

Vuoi lavorare sul tuo suono? Se senti che è il momento di smettere di leggere la teoria e vuoi iniziare a scolpire la tua voce con un percorso su misura, iscriviti alla newsletter. Ma non fermarti lì, mandami un messaggio. Sarò felice di fare una chiacchierata con te per capire come posso aiutarti a trovare la tua Voce italiana più autentica, attraverso sessioni di coaching 1:1.

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L’italiano non è solo grammatica, è musica.

Italian is not just grammar; it’s music.

Sono da anni una fiera e felice “lettrice di comunità”. Per me, leggere non è un atto solitario, è una pratica di benessere personale e collettivo che unisce le persone attraverso il suono. Ma cosa c’entra questo con il percorso di uno straniero che vuole imparare l’Italiano?

I have been, for years, a proud and happy “community reader”. For me, reading is not a solitary act, it’s a practice of personal and collective well-being, that brings people together through sound. But what does this have to do with the journey of a foreigner who wants to learn Italian?

Oltre il “muro invisibile”.

Beyond the “invisible wall.”

“Conosco le regole, ma mi sento ancora inadeguato se devo parlare”. Quello che emerge delle conversazioni reali tra studenti stranieri rivela un dolore comune: il sentirsi invisibili o trattati come “poveri incapaci” nonostante anni di studio. Esiste un muro invisibile che separa il conoscere l’italiano dal sentirsi parte della comunità.

“I know the rules, but I still feel awkward when I have to speak.” The insights from conversations among foreign students reveal a common pain: the feeling of being invisible or treated as "helpless" despite years of study. There is an invisible wall that separates knowing Italian from feeling like part of the community.

Il segreto è nell’ascolto di qualità.

The secret lies in quality listening.

Per abbattere quel muro invisibile che ti separa dalla gente, non serve studiare più grammatica: serve educare l’orecchio. Molti studenti arrivano a un livello B1 o B2 sentendosi ancora degli estranei perché il loro modo di parlare suona “meccanico” o troppo simile a un libro di testo. La verità è che noi italiani non ascoltiamo solo le parole, ma il ritmo e la melodia che ci metti dentro. Inconsciamente registriamo come sia usa tutto il corpo.

To break down that invisible wall that separates you from the people, you don’t need more grammar: you need to train your ear. Many students reach a B1 or B2 level still feeling like outsiders because their speech sounds mechanical or too much like a textbook. The truth is, us Italians don’t just listen to words; we listen to the rhythm and melody behind them. Unconsciously, we register how the whole body is used.

Non tutti i suoni sono uguali

Not all sounds are created equal

È fondamentale potersi fidare del modello sonoro di chi ti guida. Il web è affollato di docenti di grammatica che, pur conoscendo perfettamente la sintassi, possiedono forti inflessioni dialettali o una scarsa cura dell’articolazione. Se il tuo obiettivo è fare il turista e vantarti quando ordini al ristorante, allora vai così! Ma se sei un professionista serio (leggi: perfezionista) che mira a un suono elegante, l’esposizione a un italiano di qualità è un requisito non negoziabile.

It is fundamental to be able to trust the sonic model of the person guiding you. The web is crowded with grammar teachers who, despite having a perfect grasp of syntax, possess heavy regional inflections or a lack of articulatory care. If your goal is to play the tourist and show off when ordering at a restaurant, then go for it! But if you are a serious professional (read: perfectionist) aiming for an elegant sound, exposure to high-quality Italian is a non-negotiable requirement.

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Non sono la classica insegnante di Italiano

I am not your typical Italian teacher

Sia chiaro: non sono una insegnante di lingua. Praticamente tutti i miei studenti arrivano da me dopo aver passato mesi o anni a fare esercizi di grammatica, che li hanno lasciati capaci di scrivere un’email (chi non lo è, oggi, con l’AI?), ma incapaci di sostenere una conversazione vera, con naturalezza e senza sentirsi esausti dopo pochi minuti.

Let me be clear: I am not a language teacher. Basically all of my students come to me having spent months if not years filling out grammar drills that left them capable of writing an email (who isn’t with AI?), but unable to hold a real conversation with natural flow without feeling exhausted in a few minutes.

Allenare il corpo a “suonare” Italiano

Training the body to “sound” Italian

Io sono una Prosody Coach. Il mio lavoro non è dare altre regole, ma aiutare i miei allievi a smettere di usare il corpo come lo usano nella loro lingua madre. Molti studenti arrivano da me con un suono “meccanico” perché la didattica tradizionale (e l’AI) ignora un fatto fondamentale: parlare una nuova lingua non è solo un esercizio mentale, è una performance fisica coordinata.

I am a Prosody Coach. My job is not to provide more rules, but to help my students stop using their bodies the way they do in their native language. Many students come to me with a “mechanical” sound because traditional teaching (and AI) ignores a fundamental fact: speaking a new language is not just a mental exercise; it is a coordinated physical performance.

Quando parliamo una lingua diversa, attiviamo in modo differente l’intero apparato fonatorio: il cavo orale, la posizione della lingua e i muscoli facciali cambiano configurazione. Studi di fonetica articolatoria dimostrano che ogni lingua ha un “assetto posturale” specifico (Articulatory Setting); imparare l’italiano significa letteralmente allenare il cervello e i muscoli a muoversi con un ritmo e una tensione muscolare diversi.

When we speak a different language, we activate the entire phonatory apparatus differently: the oral cavity, tongue position, and facial muscles all change configuration. Studies in articulatory phonetics show that every language has a specific “Articulatory Setting”; learning Italian literally means training your brain and muscles to move with a different rhythm and muscular tension.

Io lavoro con chi vuole un suono che non sia solo corretto, ma elegante, pulito e autorevole. Senza questo allenamento fisico e sensoriale, il rischio è di restare estranei alla melodia della lingua, subendo quella frustrazione di non essere mai presi sul serio. Perché, sì certo, è la grammatica che ti dà le parole, ma è la prosodia che ti regala quel senso autentico di connessione.

I work with those who want a sound that is not just correct, but elegant, clean, and authoritative. Without this physical and sensory training, you risk remaining estranged from the language’s melody, suffering the frustration of never being taken seriously. Because, of course, grammar gives you the words, but it’s prosody that gives you that authentic sense of connection.

La scienza della voce: perché non è colpa tua

The science of voice: why it’s not your fault

Studi di neuro-linguistica dimostrano che il cervello umano reagisce ai pattern ritmici (la prosodia) ancora prima di elaborare il significato delle parole. Si chiama “Native-like Selection”. Se il ritmo è “alieno”, l’interlocutore erige inconsciamente una barriera. Ecco perché puoi conoscere tutti i verbi del mondo, ma senza la giusta musica resterai sempre sulla soglia.

Neurolinguistic studies show that the human brain reacts to rhythmic patterns (prosody) even before processing the meaning of words. If the rhythm feels “alien,” the listener unconsciously builds a barrier. It’s called “Native-like Selection”. This is why you can know every verb in the world, but without the right music, you’ll always remain an outsider.

Partecipa alla conversazione / Join the conversation

C’è stato un momento in cui ti sei sentito frustrato o frustrata perché la tua voce italiana, in qualche modo, ti ha tradito? Scrivilo nei commenti, ti ascolto (sì insomma, ti leggo).

Was there ever a moment when you felt frustrated because your Italian voice, somehow, betrayed you? Share it in the comments, I’m listening (well, reading).