Learn A Language : Study Italian
Posted on July 30, 2009
Filed Under Learn Spanish CD, Learn Spanish Online | Leave a Comment
Latin is the forefather of Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Romanian and the language of Italy can be traced back to somewhere in the later part of the tenth century. However, it was only four centuries later that the Italian language was formalized and a standard language began to take shape.
In today’s time, there are about seventy million individuals that speak Italian. Not surprisingly the majority of people speaking Italian are in Italy, Vatican, San Marino and even Switzerland however large pockets of native speakers can be found in South America, the United States and even Malta, Slovenia and Croatia.
There is a distinct vibrancy to the numerous Italian dialects. Linguists have even said that each Italian city speaks its very own, unique language. The Tuscan dialect, together with Umbrian, Romanesco and Laziale, is the closest to standard Italian as opposed to Neapolitan and Sicilian which are almost non-mutually intelligible with Italian.
There are only 21 main letters in the Italian alphabet, with five additional letters that are exclusively used for foreign names. The Italian language remains fresh from borrowing German, French and English words, while staying true to the original vocabulary that derives from Latin. Much of the Italian words have steadily become part of other foreign vocabularies, mainly musical terms, related art words and names of food.
The Italian grammar has a Latin base, so therefore its main features are shared with other Romance languages. In most cases, word order follows the ’subject-verb-object’ pattern; nouns indicate gender and number; verbs agree with subjects and also indicate person and number; adjectives agree with nouns.
Because of the many similarities to other Romance languages, the Italian language is relatively easy for someone who already speaks a Romance language to learn. However, learning Italian seems to be most popular among the speakers of English and other Germanic languages.
Now Try : Italian Phrases
Leave a Reply