Typical mistakes made by learners of Italian
Monday, 3rd August 2009
Italian is perhaps one of the least difficult languages for English speakers to learn. You probably know some Italian words already as quite a few have been borrowed into English.
There will probably be plenty of others words that look and/or sound familiar. There are some aspects of Italian that can be tricky for English speakers though.
Pronunciation
Italian vowels are ‘pure’ vowels and not diphthongs like in English. For example ‘e’ doesn’t have a ‘y’ sound after it, so bene [well] is said ‘beh-neh’ not ‘bey-ney’, and poco [little] is ‘poh-koh’ not ‘pohw-kohw’. Also note that vowels in unstressed syllables retain their sounds rather than being reduced to an indistinct uh sound, as often happens in English. For example, amico [friend] is pronounced ‘ah-mee-koh‘ and not ‘uh-mee-kohw’. Stress normally falls on the second to last syllable, but there are exceptions that you have to look and listen out for.
Captialisation
Some of the words that begin with a capital letter in English are not capitalised in Italian. This includes days of the week: lunedi [Monday], martedi [Tuesday], mercoledi [Wednesday], etc; titles such as signor [Mr] and signora [Mrs]; the names of months; the names of languages and nationalities; and the names of reglions. Capital letters are used for personal names and at the beginning of sentences however.
Genders
Italian nouns have two genders – masculine and feminine. Most nouns ending in ‘o’ are masculine and are made plural by changing the ‘o’ to ‘i’. For example ragazzo [boy] becomes ragazzi [boys] and panino becomes panini. Most nouns ending in ‘a’ are feminine and are made plural by changing the ‘a’ to ‘e’, so pizza becomes pizze and pasta becomes paste. Nouns ending in ‘e’ might be masculine or feminine and it’s best to learn the gender when you learn the nouns. Some nouns have masculine and feminine forms, for example amico [male friend] and amica [female friend].
Word order
Italian word order can vary a fair bit as quite a few of the words are inflected, which shows the role they play in a sentence. Adjectives typically come after nouns though. For example, the hot pizza is la pizza calda, and the cold pizza is la pizza fredda. Some adjectives come before nouns though. So the big pizza is la grande pizza. The word for hot, calda, is an example of a false friend and it’s important to remember that the hot tap is marked C and the cold one is marked F!
Tags: evening course, language, languages, tailor-made, italian
Posted by Simon Ager 2009-08 under
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