Lei Parla Italiano? – Learn Italian!

Why the heck should i learn Italian?

Learn Italian with ASO Terra Lingua

The choice to learn Italian is most often one of passion rather than reason, although when you work in certain industries (fashion, design etc) and you have to travel regularly to Italy and have to attend meetings, fairs and so on, a basic knowledge of Italian can give you the competitive edge and increase your advantages manifold as many Italians do not speak anything but Italian.

If the Italian realize that you speak Italian they can become very talkative - and talkative they can be! Italians do not expect visitors to speak their language and, in my experience, they are quite forgiving of language mistakes and are willing to speak more to compensate for your relative muteness. This makes for an encouraging climate for the language learner.

Facts about the Italian Language

Italian is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by another 10 million Italian citizens and descendants in the world, making it spoken by a total of approximately 70 million native speakers. It is also spoken by an additional 125 million people as a foreign language. In Switzerland, 

Italian is one of four official languages, spoken mainly in the Swiss canton Ticino. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City.[ Standard Italian, adopted by the state after the unification of Italy, is based on Tuscan (in particular on the dialects of the city of Florence and is somewhat intermediate between the Italo-Dalmatian languages of the South and the Gallo-Romance Northern Italian languages. Its development was also influenced by the other Italian dialects and by the Germanic language of the post-Roman invaders.

Italian derives diachronically from Latin and is the closest national language to Latin. Unlike most other Romance languages, Italian retains Latin's contrast between short and long consonants. As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive. In particular, among the Romance languages, Italian is the closest to Latin in terms of vocabulary. Lexical similarity is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan, 85% with Sardinian, 82% with Spanish, 78% with Rhaeto-Romance and 77% with Romanian.

Top Ten Reasons for learning Italian :-)

1.      You want to know what those opera singers are saying. (Who is Figaro anyway?)

2.      Your relatives are Italian. (And your nonna keeps saying things you don’t understand.)

3.      You’re dating an Italian. (That’s amore.)

4.      You want to watch the movies of the famous Italian directors. (After all, La Dolce Vita is so much sweeter without subtitles.)

5.      You want to read classic literature in the original language. (Dantes Inferno will be that much more caldo.)

6.      You’re planning a romantic date with an Italian theme. (When in Rome…)

7.      You’re planning to study abroad in Italy. (Be ready to wow all the Italian co-eds.)

8.      You don’t want to look like a silly tourist with a phrasebook in hand when you visit Italy. (“Where’s the leaning Tower of Pizza?”)

9.      You want to know what exactly you’re ordering the next time you go to an Italian restaurant. (So next time you’ll know the difference between pasta and pesto.)

10. You love the way the Italian language sounds. (L'italiano è così bella.)

Convinced??? Book you Italian Language Training today: info@asoterralingua.com 

Later this week i will continue with this blog. Read about interesting facts about Italy and the Italian Language!