4 Reasons Why Italian Isn’t So Hard To Learn

Learning a new language is no easy feat — it takes a lot of memorization, critical thinking, and good old-fashioned hard work. At first, learning Italian, with its numerous conjugations and complicated tense structure, might seem like a daunting task, but with a little determination and a good Italian language teacher, achieving fluency in Italian is a more realistic goal than you might think. In fact, there are several aspects of Italian that are quite easy for English speakers. Here’s a few of them below:

1. The alphabet is familiar.

Sure, memorizing dozens of verb conjugations is a challenge, but at least Italian uses a familiar writing system! Italian, like other Romance languages (and English), uses Latin characters, so you can focus your energy on complicated verb tenses and pronoun usage instead of learning a new alphabet.

2. It’s similar to other Romance languages.

Italian is part of the Romance language family, which includes other common languages like Spanish, French, and Portuguese. While these languages are markedly distinct from one another, they share several common threads, such as their use of gender for nouns, and the presence of the subjunctive mood. So your high school Spanish and French classes will come in handy, as many of the skills you learned will carry over into Italian.

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3. It shares a lot of vocabulary with English.

You already know more Italian than you think! Due to Latin’s influence about a 1,000 years ago, English and Italian share a lot of common vocabulary, making it easy to quickly increase your vocabulary. For example, the Italian word for “family” is famiglia, “school” is scuola, and “computer” is exactly the same — computer. Of course, your favorite Italian foods, like pizza and pasta, are said the same in Italian, as well.

4. There’s an abundance of Italian-language media to help you learn.

Italy has left a rich literary, cinematic, and musical legacy. As a result, it’s incredibly easy to find access to Italian books, movies, and songs to help you with both your reading and listening skills. Given the popularity of Italian as a second language, there is also an abundance of Italian language-learning apps available for your smartphone or tablet.

So don’t be afraid by Italian’s complex conjugations or confusing syntactic rules. Learning Italian certainly isn’t an impossible task. If you’re an English speaker, you’re already in a great position to jump right into the language, as you’ll find its alphabet as well as much of its vocabulary to be quite familiar.

Of course, the best way to improve your Italian as quickly and efficiently as possible is to take tailor-made Italian classes taught by a native speaker. If you’re serious about improving your Italian skills, let us show you how we can help you learn Italian by sending us a quick inquiry.