Imparare l’italiano è più facile di quello che pensi

But is Italian a difficult language to learn? All languages are difficult to learn. No language is difficult to learn. It all depends on our approach. If we are attracted to  Italian, there is normally some positive impression inside us, direct or reported, linked to Italy in the broadest sense: culture, cuisine,  natural beauties, cities of art, history, wines, music, climate, cinema, fashion, traditions, ... this is what we like about Italy. If you feel this attraction, the next logical step is to give yourself a present and  come here to study Italian. Sometimes this beautiful and positive idea is blocked by rumours that describe the Italian language as a complex language, which derives from Latin and Greek, two dead and difficult languages ... and as a consequence it’s a language that is not very useful for work, for business, and in moreover Italian is hardly spoken anywhere else in the world.

Let's get our facts right. Lots of people  in the world speak and/ or study Italian. Some time ago it was reported that Italian is the fourth most studied language in the world, after English, Spanish and Chinese. Abroad there are as many as 4.5 million Italians who study, work and spread our culture around the world, while the descendants of Italian families are about 80 million.

As we can see, Italian is not a dead language!

But Italian is not a useful language! It is not used in the world of labour, commerce and much less in the economy. Certainly we cannot and should not compare our language to English, but Italian is indisputably the language of culture. We must not forget that it is the lingua franca throughout the Catholic world and it is the main language of melodrama and opera with millions of followers all over the world  as confirmed by the worldwide success of, just to name two opera singers,  Pavarotti and Bocelli.

In addition, Italian literature is certainly among the best  in the world. It is important to emphasise that the literary production of our country has had a continuous development from the 1300 to the present, with world-class masterpieces in every century. A unique case of continuity.

And then Italian art: the production of  Etruscan, Roman, Medieval, Renaissance masterpieces that makes Italy the richest in art and one of the main tourist destinations in the world.

And one cannot but mention the cuisine, the wines, the fashion which have left and leave their influence all over the world.

Last but surely not least the beauty of the sea, mountains, landscapes, cities of art, ...

So as you can see there is a lot of Italian in the world and if you are convinced by these reasons, not directly utilitarian but equally important, and also by reasons of well-being and personal growth, go to the DILIT website www.dilit.it and enrol in a language course and come to learn Italian in Rome, a city that offers in abundance everything mentioned above.

But now let's talk about the possible difficulties ...

Age is an obstacle. At my age my memory is no longer what it used to be, I haven't been to school for too many years, ... these are some objections which are more related to a certain laziness than to reality. If you are no longer twenty years old, it is true that you no longer have the flexibility of your youth but you have the advantage of having more financial resources, you are more mature and have acquired a certain knowledge of the world to deal profitably with an Italian course. You now have the opportunity to treat yourself well, to take a break from work, but also from your family. A personal wellness space and time like this will give you the energy to return to your daily life more relaxed and satisfied. In fact, we can say from experience that in the classes of our school the students who have the most linguistic success, are not necessarily the youngest. Every year we have here a certain number of students 'of a certain age' who come to refresh their Italian, as one of them told me.

Another frequent obstacle in choosing to study a language is the experience of a difficult school history. Many people have had negative experiences at school, in some cases traumatic and the real obstacle to a new period of study is rightly the refusal to have other frustrating experiences. At Dilit in our classes the idea of school as most of us have known it is completely reversed. The way teachers work and the proposed activities are studied in such a way as to act on the unconscious and not on memory, as is the case in natural language learning. In addition, the techniques learned in the various activities in the classroom are, in large part, repeatable even at home, giving the student the possibility of keeping the language alive.

So as you can see studying  Italian is much less difficult than you might think!