Cactus Language Blog

Italian Language Guide (1): History, Usage & Difficulty of the Language

Posted by Sarah under Cactus Languages Abroad, Italian, Learning a language

Italian in the World Today

The great thing about Italian is that people tend to learn it for the sheer love of the language, country and people. Whether it’s the Italian art, food, music or landscape that draws you in, this is one language that is learnt above all for pleasure and through a desire to get closer to the people and culture of this wonderful country.

Spoken mainly in Italy, it is fair to say Italian has less economic utility than other European languages such as French and German. As such, over time, it tended to be considered a more ‘upper class’, luxury language, as those who learnt it were doing so for want rather than need. It is also the language of opera, music, art and fashion - traditionally highbrow subjects. Nowadays, however, with travel so much easier and language learning so much more accessible, Italian is learnt by people of all ages and nationalities. It is still fair to say, however, that they mainly do so because it is a culturally attractive language rather than an essential one for work or business.

Those who do need Italian for business may work in the construction, furniture or design industries, all of which have a strong presence in Italy. Although of course some Italians do speak Italian, and there is usually one person in a company who speaks English, you should not always rely on this. Many Italian businesses are small, family-run affairs, so the personal touch such as speaking to them in their own language will get you a long way.

Where Italian is Spoken

Italian is spoken as a maternal language by approximately 65 million people. Most of these are native to and live in Italy; the rest are concentrated in the small enclaves of San Marino and the Vatican City, Switzerland (where Italian is one of four official languages), and the Istria region of Croatia and Slovenia. Italian is also used and taught in Malta and Monaco, and it is widely understood in neighbouring France (especially Nice and Corsica, where Italian dialects were historically spoken) and Albania.

Elsewhere in the world, as with any language, there are communities of Italian speakers where ex-pats have settled or where immigration has traditionally occured. Although Italian is only just surviving in former Italian colonies in Africa (Somalia, Eritrea and Libya), it still exerts a marked influence in places ranging from western Europe to the US (New York, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia), and from Australia to Latin America (namely Argentina, southern Brazil and Uruguay).

History of Italian

Italian is a Romance language, meaning that it is one of a family of languages that descends from Latin, the language of ancient Rome. It belongs to the same family as Spanish, French, Catalan and Portuguese, and it follows that there are striking similarties between each of these in their sounds, structure and vocabulary. Italian, however, remains the Romance language closest to Latin when it comes to vocabulary. If you already know another Romance language - or even Latin - then learning Italian should be a much quicker process for you.

It is partly credit to the famous Italian poet Dante Alighieri that Italian became formalised as a language, at the beginning of the 14th century. Through his works, Dante combined his native Tuscan dialect with Sicilian and other southern Italian languages, and this went on to become the standard language that Italians could understand and converse with. The original language of Tuscany therefore evolved into what would become the basis of the Italian language that we know today.

Variations of Italian

As with any country, anyone learning Italian will find regional variations within the language relating to accent and vocabulary and even some verb conjugations. There are however also regional dialects to be aware of, such as Neopolitan (Naples/Campania region), Venetian (Venice/Veneto region), Friulian (Friuli region), and the island dialects of Sicilian and Sardinian.

These regional dialects are only spoken in their individual regions, and are not official languages. They may influence the Italian spoken locally, with local accents and idioms, but they tend to be spoken by the older population and only in informal contexts. Younger Italians are usually brought up on and stick to standard Italian. You should therefore get by perfectly on the standard Italian that you learn as a foreigner.

Difficulty of Italian

Is Italian difficult to learn? At first, any language can seem difficult to learn - especially if you don’t have that so-called ‘linguistic streak’ in you. Like any new skill, you need to put in time and practice. Yet, when compared with other worldwide languages, Italian is considered one of the easier languages to learn. And if you are already interested in subjects such as music or cooking, the chances are you may already have some basic Italian words up your sleeve.

Languages like Russian and Chinese are inherently difficult to learn, given that you invariably need to learn a new alphabet before you even start out. Italian, however, has the advantage that it looks similar to how it sounds - not as much as Spanish, admittedly, which is perfectly phonetic and probably the easiest Romance language to start out with. With Italian most words read how they look, but there are few important things to note:

• The consonant ‘c’ is pronounced hard, like the English ‘k’ (as in kart), before a, o, u - but before e and i it is pronounced like the English ‘ch’, as in church
• The consonant ‘g’ acts in a similar way - hard before a, o and u, but ’soft’ (as in general) before e and i
• When a consonant is doubled, the intonation of the word should be different from when the consonant appears on its own: a double consonant means that the preceding vowel should be longer, with more stress on it
• As a general rule (there are exceptions), the stress usually appears on the penultimate syllable of an Italian word; if the emphasis is meant to be placed at the end of the word, on the last vowel, then an accent will appear to tell you so, eg. vità.

With its roots in Latin, being a Romance language, you will find Italian even easier if you speak another Romance language like Spanish, French or Portuguese, where many of the words and grammatical structures are similar. French is probably the closest language to Italian out of all of them. Tenses like the Subjunctive (which doesn’t exist in English) will make more sense, and the gender of words (masculine or feminine) will come more naturally.

Beware, though, of false friends - words that look similar to words in English or other languages you speak, but which often have a very different meaning! A good example is eventualmente: in English, ‘eventually’ means ‘in the end’, or ‘ultimately’, whereas in Italian eventualmente implies doubt or possibility: ‘eventualmente vengo domani‘ signifies ‘I may come tomorrow’. Sensibile is another common false friend, meaning ’sensitive’ rather than ’sensible’, as is easily assumed.

Making mistakes is all part of learning a language though…don’t be scared to get out there and practise, and don’t worry if you’re not perfect straight away. That’s the whole point of learning!

In bocca al lupo!

Tags:Dante Alighieri, Italian, Italian cooking, italy, Naples, Romance language, Sicily, Venice