So, I am a German language student; I have a fairly intensive background and my goal is fluency. I already have plans to study in Germany my junior year. I am going into an advanced German class as a freshman in college, but I also feel the need to work on my Italian, since I will likely be doing key studies in opera. I have had many years of Italian phonetics and have picked up some basic Italian, but I obviously need formal training.
My question is thus: at my school, most elementary language classes are year long courses, which I have no interest in taking. There is an Intensive Elementary Italian course that is a semester long and counts for twice as many credits as the year long course. Should I take an intensive Italian course on top of my advanced German? I have always picked up languages very quickly, and I would like to be able to go into intermediate Italian during my freshman year, to give me a boost if I decide to split my study abroad into a semester in Germany and a semester in Italy.
Do you think two rather intensive language courses would be too much, especially considering one is Germanic and one is Romantic? I have some background in Romantic languages (Spanish) but I dropped it in favor of German.
Advice would be greatly appreciated!