About the Italian Language
Italian is widely regarded as an inherently musical language:
this is probably attributable to the fact that most words end in a
vowel. Not only does this make it a very suitable language for
opera, it also means that once you are familiar with its rhythms,
it is a comparatively easy language to pronounce.
Even if you are a complete beginner, you are probably already
familiar with a good range of Italian words, such as ciao,
spaghetti, opera, minestrone, al
fresco, and so on. Italian and English share a common source in
Latin, so many words are similar in both languages.
Italian has borrowed many English words over the years. il
computer, il marketing, il checkin, OK,
un party, un week-end are just a few examples. Some
borrowed words have been adjusted and Italianized, such as
stoppare ('to stop') and cliccare ('to click a
computer mouse').
There are a few general differences between Italian and English.
Unlike English, Italian is a phonetic language: within the limits
of a few simple rules, letters are pronounced consistently. This
makes it a comparatively easy language to speak. The regular
sound-to-letter correlations also mean there are rarely any
surprises in spelling.
As Italian (like French, Spanish, and Romanian) belongs to the
Romance group of European languages that are derived from Latin,
nouns are either masculine or feminine and articles and adjectives
have to agree with the nouns they refer to. Italian has more
variation in verb forms than English: for example, where English
has just two verb forms in the present tense ('live' for I/you
(singular and plural)/we/they - and 'lives' for he/she/it), Italian
has six different forms - abito, abiti, abita,
abitiamo, abitate, abitano.
Italian also has two ways of addressing people (tu being
the informal and lei the formal 'you' form), which affects
pronouns, possessives, and verb forms. Most Italians are very
sympathetic towards people making an effort to speak their language
and will encourage you in your attempts.
