Toto Cutugno was probably the first man on Earth who brought Italy to me — Thanks, man! Before school with its geography lessons, my own curiosity and research in books, before all of the relentless questions to my parents about a strange, boot-shaped country I saw in my favorite huge atlas, and even (even!!!) before the delicious ingenuity of pizza got to me, this one man came singing into my life, as well as into the lives of millions of others, blasting his catchy tune from every radio station and every possible TV channel: "Lasciatemi canta-a-are..." ("Let me sing...") — and changed forever the world around me.
Now there was Italy — with its peculiar language, characteristic sounds, energetic gestures, undeniable passion, and, sure enough, pasta and pizza! But language especially! I believe once you heard the rhythm of the Italian speech, you can never mistake it for anything else. Later in life, I was surprised by my own husband who told me he knew nothing about Toto, which apparently means a lot of people did not have the same chance as I did to fall into Italian to that famous baritone. So let's fix it right here, right now, and give you your own taste of Italian in use (03:56):
Italian is not just the official language of Italy. It's also the official language in Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, Istria County in Croatia and Slovene Istria in Slovenia; the second most common language in Argentina, and a regional language in certain parts of Brazil where schools are required to teach it. In total, all over the world around 85 million people speak Italian (surely, some 65 million of them are Italians).
By the way, it became the official language of Italy only... in 2007! Remember, I told you about a long fight over its standardized version in the country? And, of course, it took time to teach it to the population, turn it into a habit the majority agrees on. Even now half of the Italian speak a regional language or a regional dialect (which are not the same thing) in addition to Italian. I'd imagine this is how gestures got so helpful!.. (even though they also have "dialects")
Toto in the video above does a good job "selling" calm pace of Italian in his charming song, but did you notice that when you hear Italian speech it sounds somewhat faster than anything else you heard before? Is it just the perception or the actuality? And the truth is, Italian speech indeed has a faster speed than, say, English. BUT! There is good news!
According to a recent research done on 17 languages, despite the fact that some languages contain lots of information per syllable and emerge more slowly from our mouths, while others pack less meaning into each sound as they "gallop" along, in any language we all transmit information at about the same rate: ~39 bits per second. I find it absolutely fascinating how with all the diversity of the languages that exist in the world the Universe still managed to equalize them, to make them even by that particular metric — amount of information conveyed.
Though you most likely to use Italian only in Italy, still, it's exciting to get in touch with the Italian culture via its language. As any newbie, I started off my Langventure into it right from the basics, a.k.a. alphabet, which is pretty much similar to the English one, except for some "missing" letters. I mean, I understand, in some way, the lack of letters like J, X, Y, W, but the absence of the letter K seemed rather odd, especially because in the "neighboring" Spanish language this letter "lives" happily amongst its "brothers".
Saying that, I have to also add that, when it comes to things like foreign words, acronyms, company names and number plates on cars, all of the five letters mentioned above are right there.
So how do you live without a letter K in a language? A tricky answer is: not having a letter in the alphabet doesn't equal not having a sound in the language.
Italian goes about it by using C and CH to replace the sound [ k ]. Just pay attention what vowels go after them as it changes the sound [ k ] into another:
- CH makes a hard [ k ] sound (like in a word "cat") before vowels i, e:
Mi chiamo (mee k-ya-moh) "My name is..." - C makes the same [ k ] sound before vowels a, o, u:
caffè (kuh-feh) "coffee" - C needs to be followed by CH to turn it into [ k ] sound if it's followed by vowels i, e:
macchina (muk-kee-nuh) "machine, car"
By the way, in Italian, the combination CH never reads as ch- in the English word "chat" (sound [ tʃ ]). To make this sound, letter C is used placed before vowels i, e: ciao (chow) "hello" (and also "goodbye" — yes, like the Hawaiian "aloha"). And even if it doubles before the same vowels, it is still sound [ tʃ ]: piccione (pea-chyo-neh) "pigeon". Takes a getting-used-to, as you see :)
Anyway, with just 21 letters in the Italian alphabet, all the sounds of the language are already familiar and easy to replicate if you speak English (that I assume you do since you're Langventuring alongside me here), including the cymbal-like sound -zz- that we see, for example, in the word pizza. So with just a handful of pronunciation rules — like that H is always silent, or like holding a double consonant sound a little longer than not a double one, or rolling R (Roma, ricotta, ragazza), or like the ones I shared above — and a smidge of practice you'll be able to read and say Italian words in no time!
As for words with accent marks (normally over the last vowel: à, è, ì, ò, ù), which are not that wide-spread in the Italian language, those are used occasionally to show the difference between two words spelled the same way like: e ("and") and è ("is"); cita ("to quote") and città ("city"). The way you say these words is by simply putting the stress on that accented letter. And fatto! Done!
That's the easy part. Then comes the hardcore one — Italian grammar. And things get a little overwhelming but nothing too hard that a little (surely, I mean lots!) of practice wouldn't fix. For example, you will have to brace yourself for the intricate ways Italian articles depend on the gender and number of a word they're used with and a letter that word starts with, how there're 7 forms of definite articles (with an astounding ability to mix with apostrophes and prepositions!) and 4 forms of indefinite articles.
You'd have to get used to all the conjugations of Italian verbs and all the wide array of tenses. But before you got heart broken and quit, let me give you a little boost of hope: just like for the beginners in English, when kicking off your Italian, keep in mind that to have a complete and meaningful conversation, three (3!) tenses may be just enough: presente (present), passato prossimo (near past), and imperfetto (imperfect). Throw in the imperativo (the one for orders like "Listen!" or "Give me!"), since it has pretty much the same form as the present, and you're set for a chat. There, you've got your "road map" now!
I tried to get my bearings on all of the Italian tenses, the number of which seems to be 21 (compared to 12 in English), but it turned out not to be something you can wrap your head around with just a quick glance. But with Italian being the 4th most studied language in the world and 2-3 million learners all over the planet choosing to start speaking Italian (yearly!), you shouldn't have much trouble making good progress there. Plus, there are always great resources like movies and songs in Italian (Buongiorno, Toto!) available online to prompt and spruce up with fun your studying.
And for more inspiration, read Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love" with the Eat-phase taking place in Italy and the words like attraversiamo ("let's cross", as in a road) singing in your ears and rolling through your body in a wave of sounds that feel intense, vibrant, exciting. You got to make your journey into a language (any language, really) interesting to you. So use all and any of my tips, spend time with Toto, or find what you fancy, and enjoy the ride! Times when language learning meant suffering are gone with the.. well, not wind, but internet! :)
By the way, you know the specific intonation Italians use when they talk? That bouncy "O, mam-ma mia!"? Well, trying to talk in Italian, I discovered there is no way you could pronounce it differently! The language literally makes you talk like that. You may fight it and try your own "melody", but eventually it will win over and you'll give in to the accent every italiano vero is famous for.
A presto! (Ah pres-toh!) See you soon!
"Lasciatemi put LIKE to this superb article about italiano!"
Discover more about Italian and other languages at langventure.mystrikingly.com!
