Yoell Schutte
Ever since I was little I have been fascinated by languages. In secondary school, the Culture and Society profile, the subject package with no fewer than 5 languages, was therefore not a strange choice.
The best thing about all languages was translation. Puzzling with grammar rules, meanings and idiomatic expressions: I loved it. When I had to make a choice for my further study, I hesitated for a long time. I wanted something with languages, but what exactly? I then decided to do a general study on language, Linguistics.
Italian language course
It was a very interesting study, in which I learned a lot about how children learn a language so quickly and easily, what happens in the brains of people with aphasia or dyslexia and how the speech organ works. Still, I preferred to learn a language, so I decided to take an Italian language course. I liked it so much that I changed my study direction and switched to Italian language and culture.
Love for the country
When you study a language, you naturally deal with more than just learning grammar and words. I have also learned a lot about the history of Italy, the rich culture and the versatile literature and through this study my love for the country has only grown.
Translate
The subject of my bachelor's thesis had to do with machine translation (eg Google Translate) and what often goes wrong. My interest in translation was therefore still there and I decided to follow the master's in Translation after my bachelor's degree.
Bella napoli
In 2013 I did an internship in Naples for more than four months. There I worked as a student assistant in Dutch at L'Orientale, one of the two major universities in Naples. During that period I learned a lot, of course about the Italian language, but also about the culture of the country, southern Italy in particular.
I thought it was a bit exciting beforehand, because it wouldn't be the safest city in Italy. I also ended up in Forcella, the most chaotic and noisy part of the city.
Friendly Neapolitans
Fortunately, I have experienced myself that it is not nearly as bad as most people think. Of course you have to keep a close eye on your bag and don't just walk down the street at night, but I'm sure you have to be just as careful in other big cities. In my experience, the Neapolitans are very friendly and helpful. They try to make you feel at ease in the big city.
Too little time
During my stay in Naples I also visited some other places in Campania. I have also been to the islands of Capri, Ischia and Procida and although all three are very different, each has beautiful sights and landscapes.
Of course the time was too short and I would have liked to visit many more, but I now have a good reason (actually several!) to go back to beautiful Italia.
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