<p>After much thought (and many arguments with my parents), I have decided to take Italian in College. Can anyone who has learned Italian tell me how difficult it is, or if there are any good online resources for me to get a feel for the langauge before I take the class (as i've heard that college language classes can be a pain). Thanks!</p>
<p>Never taken Italian, but..</p>
<p>"as i've heard that college language classes can be a pain"</p>
<p>Not so true imo. At my school we are assigned like 4-5 pages out of our book to read a night (M-Thur) and then we have online homework. The problem with the online homework is when you submit your answers it gives you the correct answers...no matter what you marked down. So if you're in a hurry there is an out (it's the Quia program). As for the the reading part, all you HAVE to read is the stuff that is like language structure; the stuff that shows you how do the tenses, where adjectives go, etc. You can get by the rest of the stuff by making notecards and studying them, because that's all the rest of the book is for is getting you aquainted with the vocabulary.</p>
<p>All in all, the online time language is a probelm is if you DO NOT do the small amount of work to actually learn the language. I'm not sure at other schools, but our final is an ORAL final, so if you didn't do the work, you probably won't be able to talk to the teacher, which is ackward...</p>
<p>Italian should be a fun and somewhat a breeze of a course. I think Italian is comparable to French, and I found that language easy.</p>
<p>oh I'm very enthusiastic about learning Italian, and I would like to either work or stay in Italy for an extended period of time. I'm thinking about getting a book or two to try to pick up the language over the summer; do you think I could acquire proficiency in that period?</p>
<p>personally, i thought italian was a pain in the ass. its very pretty (much more so than spanish and french, imo) but i thought it was hard. of the 4 italian classes i took at UVa were my 3 of them were my lowest grades in college.</p>
<p>I took French in hs and then switched to Italian in college. I've found it tough, but not horrible. There are a lot of similarities to French (and more, I've heard, to Spanish). I've actually found that spoken Italian is easier to understand than French. Written Italian is, I think, comparable to written French.</p>
<p>I am taking Italian now and I think it is hard. I agree with jags that it is harder than spanish and that they likely will be my lowest grades here.</p>
<p>italain vocabulary is so similar to french. but, i think italian could be hard because like spanish u have pronounce all the vowels...
i thought spanish was difficult because of the conjugations, french is more dependent on compound construction and the order of pronouns is a bit tricky. </p>
<p>italian spelling is a bit tricky. spanish vocabulary was kind of strange, so is portuguese..</p>
<p>but romance langauges in general are easy compared to greek or russian or latin where u have to deal with cases (nominative, genitive, etc.). </p>
<p>i'm an art history major, so i need to know some basic french and perhaps german. but i definitely am leaning toward going back to spanish, or learning arabic or greek, or achieving fluency in french. decisions!!!!</p>
<p>If you can roll your Rs, then pronouncing italian is pretty easy--you pronounce every letter, there are no "tricks." However, i've never figured out the spelling with double consonants (it seems random when its single or double) and i found out the hard way that spelling counts. doesn't help i'm a crappy speller in english, too.</p>
<p>jags, does italian get any easier at the inter. or lit level? I'm in elementary II right now...</p>
<p>My two cents:</p>
<p>So, 5 years from now, when you start looking for jobs, what do you think will carry more weight-- being able to speak italian or spanish?</p>
<p>Italian is a romanticized language, but that is about it. Unless you have plans to go to italy, italian won't help you getting a job in the us, except if you intend to work in little italy. Spanish is a pivotal language, and with it you will be able to understand italian and other latin languages. </p>
<p>But if you want to learn it for the sake of sounding like tony soprano, then by all means go ahead.</p>
<p>italian is easy. if you live in italy and take intensive immersion courses, and have learned another foreign language first, you can be fluent in a month or two.</p>
<p>the grammar is quite difficult for me since I have no background of it whatsoever. But I took it because I like taking languages. I think it's a great challenge to learn another language. Take at risk if you don't like to learn languages, it can be hard for you. I managed to get a B, not the best of everything but I learned a lot. I took intensive italian instead of elementary.</p>
<p>Oh I dont think pronunciation is a problem, since I speak 2 other languages (Hindi/Urdu and comprehension in Marwari) and those 2 have pretty distinct pronunciations. I guess my question is more, how difficult is just learning the vocabulary and the grammar? </p>
<p>and frasifrasi, I had debated with my parents on this very point for quite some time. But I think it all boils down to how much I am going to enjoy learning a new language. For whatever reason, I am just not enthusiastic at all about learning Spanish, and this apathy is going to carry over to how much time I put in, resulting in lower grades, etc etc. But since i'm really passionate about Italian, then I coudl see myself putting in the time.</p>
<p>Italian vocabulary is not difficult to learn. If you want to be fluent, it will take some time and you will have to read books/newspapers for many years to come. Pronunciation is very easy since most words are pronounced the exact way they are read. The grammar of any latin language is going to be complex, with tricky conjugations, and a myriad of exceptions. But since you speak urdu and hindi, I don't think it is going to be that challenging. But you will definitely have to work harder than people who might have a background in spanish, french, etc. </p>
<p>My first language is spanish and learned italian throughout high school, by the way. All of it is gone now.</p>
<p>One thing though, I cannot conceive how you are apathetic about learning spanish and enthusiastic about learn italian. Italian is very similar to spanish and other latin languages, so I don't understand how you can't like a language that is 58% equivalent(especially the grammar) to what you want to learn.</p>
<p>And also, what is the point of learning a language that you probably won't use ever? I would love to learn french and chinese, but what is the point? Without having anyone to talk to or no use for it, I would eventually lose interest and forget everything within 2 years.</p>
<p>i hate spanish b/c i had nightmarish teachers through k-12 who soured my enthusiasm towards the language and whose anal grading practices caused me to turn away from it in a classroom setting(no offense to those who speak it).</p>
<p>i think most people are really ignorant on languages. i"m not a linguist or have any interest in learning tons of foreign languages so typical of europeans, but i was able to realize that latin, although a "dead" language, is easier to USE than modern languages because pronunciation does not matter at all, also u are not concerned with RECALLING, but RECOGNIZING. the latter is much easier than the former. why else would u learn latin but to read, to have access to eccleastical and historical documents? same goes to ancient greek, except ancient greek is similar to modern greek and u can perhaps use it in greece, but also parts of asia where alexander's alexandrias still holds greek populations. also, many Roman documents are in greek. greek is influential not just in western europe, but eastern europe.</p>
<p>another thing, u really need to consider the prevalence of the language. italian is largely useful only italy. arabic or german or french or spanish are spoken in huge number of countries.</p>
<p>It depends how you are with langauges. I'm pretty good at them and i LOVE LOVE LOVE italian. i've studied french (4 years), spanish (4 years) and italian (3 years, but 4 years of classes because i skipped a level) & italian is definitely the easiest in my opinion. the grammar is much less complicated and italians really don't use a very wide vocabulary. it's also a beautiful language. and a beautiful culture.</p>
<p>plus, everything is spelled just as its pronounced and vice-versa. so its easy to read/write it, even if you can't speak very well.</p>
<p>I agree. Italian is definitely the most appealing language because of the rich culture and oscillating cadence. As an indian person who speaks italian, you will deifinitely be unique, but you will never be as fluent as a native speaker at this point. So, your language will only be useful if you enjoy italian literature and for tourism convenience. As an indian person who speaks spanish/arabic/chinese, you will be unique and coveted by employers. Those language may not be as harmonic, but are very useful in this increasingly ethnic society.</p>
<p>Whichever romance language you take, it wont be hard to pick up a third later if you want to. After four years of French in high school and the equivalent of three semesters of Italian in college (one was an intensive two-semesters-in-one course), I can usually do a pretty decent job of reading Spanish. Not fluently by any means of course, but well enough that I know that I wont have a huge problem if I decide to take a Spanish course next year.</p>
<p>Latin is somewhat like classical Chinese. (LS?) Nobody speaks it anymore, and the structure differs somewhat from the modern derevitives. I think that learning classical chinese would be cool because you wouldn't have to worry much about pronounciation. Granted it'd be a large undertaking for someone not already aquainted with Chinese characters, but many of the more worthy Chinese literature is written in traditional characters in a dead language. The only major hinderance is that once you knew the language, you'd have to deal with the complicated web of dead (but once 'common') 'common literary language.' In other words, authors often made references to currently famous figures and myths (much like westerns make references to the greek myths and biblical stuff), and these references are totally lost to a westerner unfamilar with the nuances of Chinese history,mythology, and idiotic/idiomatic puns....</p>