Speak and Understand The Italian Language
The descendent of Latin, the language spoken in the Roman empire, Italian is now spoken by more than 60 million people. Unlike its ancestor, however, Italian has grammar that is considered much easier to learn.
You may be interested in learning Italian for a variety of reasons. Perhaps you are going on a vacation to Italy or intend to live there. Maybe you have Italian ancestry or plan on getting a job that involves work with Italians. Whatever the reason may be, learning Italian can be a very rewarding experience.
If you already speak another romance language like Spanish or French, you will find that Italian is very similar. Many linguists estimate that the lexical similarity between Italian and French is 89% while the lexical similarity between Italian and Spanish is 82%. Even if you have only studied Spanish or French in high school, you will find that the grammar is quite similar and easy to pick up.
English speakers worldwide think of Italian as a very beautiful language. Unlike English, Italian puts a lot of emphasis on vowel sounds and many Italian words have vowel sounds at the end.
Tricky Italian points for English speakers include determining gender for nouns since words are either of the masculine gender or of the feminine gender. Additionally, verbs are conjugated with very different forms depending on the subject of the sentence.
However, comforting points include the fact that Italian word order is very similar to word order in English. Italian is also a subject-verb-object language like English so English speakers will find it very easy to begin creating new sentences in Italian.
Because so many people are interested in learning Italian, there is a great variety of Italian language learning programs for you to choose from. From audio programs to traditional textbooks, you will never be at a loss for materials to learn from.
Before you begin learning Italian, you should remember to sit down and make a serious commitment to learning the language. It can be a tough process but if you stick to it, you will be greatly rewarded. On the other hand, don’t just simply do grammar exercises and read textbooks, you should also enjoy yourself in Italian, too! Watch an Italian film or buy an Italian language CD. You will find that these activities can be some of the most rewarding when learning Italian.
Author Robertson Kunz has a language learning guide: learn a foreign language fast. Italian learners: Italian fluency.