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Italy is a country rich in culture, fashion, and food. It's no wonder that thousands of people travel there every year. Whether you want to ride on a gondola in the canals of Venice or devour a bowl of hearty pasta, learning some Italian might be useful for you.
When you decide to learn Italian you are opening yourself to a community of 63 million speakers worldwide. Learning Italian is not only useful for a getaway to Italy, but it's also spoken in Switzerland, Luxembourg, parts of Africa, and Argentina.
Italian is a beautiful language. It almost sounds like music to your ears. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could actually master it? But is it easy to learn Italian? Let's find out!
Italian is one of the Romance Languages
Italian is one of the eight Romance languages. These are languages that have origins in Vulgar Latin, which was spoken by the Western Roman Empire. All these languages are very closely related.
Although English is not a Romance language, a good chunk of it uses Latin words similar to Italian. If you're a native Spanish or English speaker, you will definitely recognize some words and phrases.
Pronunciation
Starting off with the alphabet is a great approach. You can learn all of the letter sounds. The Italian alphabet is similar to the English alphabet but shorter by 5 letters.
Like Spanish, Italian letters only have one sound which makes pronouncing a word simple. One example of tricky pronunciation is in the case of the "c" sound, you'd pronounce the word "cibo" as a "ch" (think the word choose), but the sound changes in the word "anche". In this case, the "ch" is pronounced as the, "k" sound.
Vocabulary
If you speak Spanish, English, or studied Latin at some point, you have an advantage.
We already know that the Italian language comes from Latin and English borrowed words as well. Words that share the same meaning and have similar spelling are called, "cognates."
Take a look below and see words that are similar in English and Italian.
• Poeta - poet
• Futuro - future
• Qualita - quality
• Universita - university
These are just a few examples of the cognates you will come across when you learn Italian.
Be aware, there is a thing called "false" cognates that look the same but don't mean the same thing. For example:
• Annoiare - means "boring", not annoying
• Confrontare - means "compare", not confront
Related article: 101 Basic Italian Phrases For Every Situation (+Free PDF)
Grammar
Here's the good news, Italian also follows the SVO word order like English. However, Italian nouns have a gender, it uses the subjunctive a lot, and there are plenty of conjugations to remember.
Arguably, the hardest part of Italian grammar is the verb tenses. If you speak English some of the grammar concepts will be hard for you to wrap your head around.
Define Easy
No matter what, learning a language isn't easy. It takes motivation, consistency, and hard work.
Italian is considered an easy language because there are more difficult languages out there (Chinese, Russian, Farsi). If you already speak a Romance language, Italian will be a lot easier for you to learn. However, you as the language learner can define if it's easy or hard based on your own terms.
