I am a “forever” Italian student I guess. I am worlds better than when we arrived but I should be because it’s been ten years. I still take a lesson a week. I still wish I was better.
Italian is interesting to me in a lot of ways. Many words are similar to English. It’s the grammar that is completely different. And the use of pronouns correctly still confounds me.
Another thing is pronunciation. Italian is much easier than English in that English has French and Germanic influences. This means we don’t always pronounce all the letters, nor pronounce them the same way. Many remain silent. In Italian, it is very simple…pronounce every letter. Double consonants are pronounced by a pause and then the second one is pronounced. Like the word gatto. Cat. Prounounced gat-toe. Note the two separate “t” sounds But if it had just one “t” — gato, it would be pronounced gat-oh. This is a distinct difference here. We don’t always hear it. Every vowel is also pronounced. For instance our boiler for hot water and heat is a Caldaio. Pronounced cald-ah-ee-oh. Gotta say all those vowels.
Vowels have different sounds. a is ah. i is a long e. e is eh. O is oh. u is not you, rather ooo. Ci is chee. Ce is chay where the ch is soft as in chance. Ch is a k sound. Ca is ka. Cu is coo.
Then there is which syllable to accent. This is not a hard and fast rule. I find this is a big issue for me. If I accent the wrong syllable the Italian I am speaking to does not understand me. For instance, sedano. Celery. The normal rule of thumb is to accent the second to last syllable. So I said say-DAN-oh. They would just look blankly at me. Finally, I learned it is SAY-dahno. Evidently it is unrecognizable if not accented properly. And this is just one example. Always tripping me up.
Another thing I am always pondering. The language lacks the nuances that English has. Just one example is the word caldo. It means hot. There is no word for warm. There is tiepido which is tepid. That’s it. I was trying to describe to my Italian teacher that the house we rented in Ireland was warm. As in, it was someone’s home — warm, inviting. All we have is hot. The house was hot, which must be used to connote it was warm. This is not sufficient for me. Same with pain. Dolore. It is used for pain and ache and just about any other sort of pain. I need a better way to describe how I feel. Oh well, it is what it is. It is always endlessly interesting, the study of languages. One of the fun and challenging things that hopefully keep our brains young living here.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment! I just barely skimmed the surface with this little post. I love languages, although I don’t have a talent for learning them, so it is fun for me. I had a big discussion with my Italian teacher about what I said and of course, as Italians tend to be, she had her own opinions and didn’t agree with much of what I said. It made for an interesting lesson though! Thanks for reading and for commenting.
Hi Nancy! Interesting thoughts. I am endlessly shaking my head when I read of expats living in Italy who comment that they have never learned Italian and they get by just fine with Google Translate. While GT is fine for everyday tasks, etc., it often misses the mark with more nuanced communication. I wonder if, while there is no word translating directly from English to Italian to signify “warmth” as in a “warm” welcome, a “warm” (inviting) home, etc., there are other ways that Italians would describe such a home. Unfortunately, my Italian is not nearly good enough to begin to describe such a home with any nuance/accuracy.
I did a quick Google search to discover the average number of words used/known by an educated Italian vs English speaker. For both it’s around the same — 25,000 to 45,000 words with the higher end those who are college educated. So it would seem it’s not a question of fewer words, but maybe what those words describe?
Again, a very interesting topic which is, itself, nuanced 🙂 A people’s language is truly a window into their souls and their worldview. Thank you for the post!
Hi Anita, hand gestures are a big part of the Italian language, you’re right. They are more an enhancement to the language than a modifier. They are also, in fact, their own stand alone language. In Italy, back when it first became a country, they decided that the Italian language would be the Florentine dialect. At the time there were hundreds of distinct languages/dialects spoken on the peninsula and the islands. No one could understand one another. So the gestures evolved.
Carlo, it is true. I am told even Italians get the grammar wrong.
Very interesting about the Italian language. I know very much less than you, having only stayed for months at a time every year or so. I wonder if hand gestures add more information when there is only one word like hot?
There’s definitely something different about learning a language from the time you are a young child than when you are an adult or a teenager. As I’ve written before in your blog, I started learning Spanish from the time I was 6 years old. Still, I am not as fluent as native speakers.
Pronunciation and accentuation is similar in Spanish and Italian but proper Spanish requires accent marks to identify exceptions from the norm where Italian only requires graphical accent marks on vowels when they are in the last syllable of a Tronche word (stress on the last syllable). Yikes! From what I’ve read, even native Italian speakers are occasionally confused! Good luck!
Thanks Bill! It was the lack of nuance today with my teacher that spurred me to write it.
Hi Lynn, made me smile. Yep, gotta get that pronunciation into Italian!
Ho Royane, Well, maybe it will help a little!
Thanks Noel! I do get frustrated, but I’m much better than I was so I guess that’s something. I concentrate on the things I’ll use, rather than the tenses I can do without!
Excellent post!
Thanks for this explanation! I was a French major in college but first learned Spanish and love languages.After our 3rd trip to Italy in 6 years I decided it was time to learn Italian. We just returned from Italy and I was able to understand alot more but when people start speaking fast it’s hard!!
We also moved to a foreign country from the US almost 3 1/2 years ago(2021), the Bahamas.We always wanted a ceramic plaque from AnaCapri made for our beach house and in 2022 we were finally able to pick it out.When I told the owner the name of our house I said ” Celeste” the English pronunciation.He said” Oh, Chaylestay!”
Just read thisVERY excellent information Nancy. Now if I was 30 years younger and or had an appitiude for language I would be able to digest it all and use it!!!
Ben detto, Nancy, and don’t even get me started on the congiuntivo mood, which many Italians no longer even use, or verbi pronominali, which are frequently used in everyday Italian. Italian is a beautiful, melodic language, but even after being a student of fifty years (on and off), I often get frustrated at not knowing how to say what I want to say and, as you note, the way I want to say it. Ma c’è la caviamo. But we get by.