Italian is one of the most beautiful and fun romance languages to speak.
The sounds of the language are enough to take you to another time and place.
WHY YOU SHOULD LEARN A SECOND LANGUAGE
Learning a second language is never an “easy” task, they are all a different level of difficulty.
But language learning is a valuable part of training the brain, and it provides many health benefits.
Learning another language opens you up to new experiences and cultures.
☞ 6 MORE REASONS TO LEARN A LANGUAGE
1. To improve your study and cognitive skills
2. To build your self-confidence
3. To develop your communication skills
4. To become a more interesting person
5. For a sense of achievement
6. Joy of painting
WHY YOU SHOULD STUDY ITALIAN
Italian is one of the most popular romance languages to learn and traces its roots to Latin, a language with a long history.
When you learn Italian, it opens you up to all the history, literature, poetry, and art Italy has given the world over the generations. In fact, Italy was home to some of the greatest minds in the world.
Travelling through Italy, or any of the other countries where Italian is spoken will be much more enjoyable if you speak Italian.
Vacation is made better by the ability to talk to the people who live in the country you’re visiting.
Speaking Italian will also allow you to enjoy Italian films, music, and art in a way you couldn’t before. Knowing the language can help you fully experience a country’s culture, and appreciate it even more.
But you’ll also be learning the language of fashion and design, and of Italy’s much-loved cuisine and fine wines.
HOW DIFFICULT IS TO LEARN ITALIAN?
The ease of learning a language will depend a lot on what your mother tongue is, and what other languages you already know.
Italian, as a romance language, is very similar to other romance languages like Spanish, Portuguese and French. If you know any of those, you will quickly notice similarities in Italian.
Italian is a phonetic language. That means that it sounds more or less like it is written, and all of the syllables are pronounced. This makes a language easier to understand while “listening” since you can more easily identify the words spoken.
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) has created a list to show the approximate time you need to learn a specific language as an English speaker.
The following are some of the feature of Italian that you can find different and maybe challenging:
GENDER
Like the other Latin languages in Italian even things has a gender.
Is it importat to know the gender of a noun because all the words related with it (articles, adjectives and sometimes verbs) need to be modified according to the gender.
PRONUNCIATION
A good thing about Italian is that the rules about pronunciation don’t have exceptions. There can be some particularities that you need to get used too as the use of the sound of some consonants.
ARTICLES
If your mother tongue does not use articles like Russian, you may need to put a little bit of effort in learning them. In Italian, there are different articles changing according to gender, singular or plural nouns.
VERBS CONJUGATION
Remembering which is used for what tense or with which person or number can feel overwhelming.
For English speaker learning Italian verbs conjugation is a new concept. You should learn the different patterns to conjugate the verb but also a lot of verbs that don’t follow this pattern.
CONGIUNTIVO
Congiuntivo is one of the most struggling tenses in Italian and is used to describe something not sure, thought or believed. Even many Italians make mistakes with this!