I am a native born Italian who emigrated to the US in 1956 along with my family when I was 8 years old. I am from the Abruzzo region and the Italian that I spoke in Italy and in the US with my family was a very strong Abruzzo dialect and differed greatly from standard Italian. People often assumed that I was fluent in Italian since I was born in Italy but that was far from the truth. Although I had fairly decent vocabulary my knowledge of grammar was very weak. About 15 years ago I decided t...