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Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome
Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today I’m talking about…
I Don’t Understand
or
Why Italian is Difficult for English Speakers
Oh, so many reasons. Let’s talk about a few today and next week we can talk about why it can also be easy in some ways.
The mere fact that Italian has genders for nouns is a big stumbling block for many native English-speakers, especially if they haven’t learnt a romance language before. And even if you have learnt a romance language before, you’ll find the rules aren’t the same. Yes, an ‘O’ ending is masculine and an ‘A’ ending is female, usually, but there’s the thorny issue of ‘I’ endings and ‘E’ endings. Not only are these the plural endings for masculine and feminine nouns, ‘E’ can also be a singular ending for masculine and feminine nouns, with ‘I’ as the plural. There are also exceptions that can trip you up. Some nouns, like ‘mano’ which means hand, and ends in an ‘O’ are feminine. And others, like ‘problema’, which ends in an ‘A’ and, yes, it means problem, is actually masculine. I could go on, but that’s probably enough on genders. What else is difficult?
Well, the articles that go with these nouns can be a little tricksy. They aren’t a simple ‘one fits all’. You have the regular definite article forms, Il and I for masculine singular and plural, and la and le for feminine. But if a masculine plural noun begins with a vowel, it becomes gli. If a singular masculine noun begins with certain consonants, for example a ‘Z’, or an ‘S’ followed by another consonant, you use lo, giving us ‘lo zucchero’ for the sugar and ‘lo specchio’ for the mirror. Indefinite articles are a little simpler. Regular are ‘un’ and ‘una’, for masculine and feminine, and ‘lo’ becomes ‘uno’. But you also get contractions with feminine nouns that start with a vowel. So, it isn’t ‘una arancia’ for an orange, it’s ‘un’arancia’ with an apostrophe to replace the ‘A’ and the two words joined.
Of course, verb conjugation is a lot more complex than in English. There are different endings, in all tenses, for the different points of view, I, you singular, he and she, we, you plural and they. And, like other romance languages, there is a formal and an informal you, where the third person, he or she, is used for you, or, sometimes, also the plural you form. Now, in other languages, you might use the subject pronoun, but in Italian, generally you don’t, unless you’re doing it for emphasis, as in some particular expressions, or for clarity. The only times it isn’t always clear is when you’re using he and she, or, in some cases, in the subjunctive. Then, you might want to add the subject pronoun. But, surprisingly, when reading, it’s generally clear without this.
As for the actual verbs, there are three regular form patterns for ere, ire and are verbs, but there are plenty of exceptions that don’t follow the rules, the two most common being the verbs that are used most often, because they’re also the auxiliary verbs in compound tenses. That’s essere, to be and avere, to have. But let’s talk about stress first.
No, not the stress of learning a language, the stress on words. In English, the stress is all over the place, and I discovered the other day that sometimes we have double stress in words, which I’d never thought about before. But enough of that. Stress in Italian has rules. The basic rule is that there is stress on the second to last syllable, but, oh my, are there a lot of exceptions to this. First, there are the simple exceptions where there’s an accent. This is often at the end of a word, to ensure that the last letter is stressed. These are mainly grave accents, but there is also an acute accent. These also affect pronunciation in other ways. However, some words are pronounced with the stress elsewhere without any visual indication that it’s different. You just have to get used to those.
When it comes to verbs, though, it gets even more complicated. For infinitives, the stress might be on the first vowel of the ire, ere, are, but it also can be on the third to last syllable in many cases. And the stress of the syllables in the different tenses gets even more complicated - far too complicated for this rundown.
Use of tenses is another issue, because it isn’t always obvious to an English speaker which tense to use, because what we might consider one tense in our language, is something a little different in Italian. Plus deciding whether to conjugate with ‘essere’ or ‘avere’ as the auxiliary is another minefield, or memory exercise, whichever you prefer. And then, you get into pronouns and agreements and it gets even more complicated. There’s no way around this other than just learning what does what and where.
Yeah, pronouns. And joining pronouns together. And where to put them when you have multiple verbs. And possessive pronouns and whether or not to use the definite article and a possessive pronoun, or just the article, or just the possessive pronoun.
Prepositions - di, da, a, in, con, su, per, tra/fra - can also be a thorny issue, because you can have different prepositions after the same verb, depending on how you’re using it and how you use it doesn’t always correspond to the English version. And some of them join up with the article when the two are next to each other.
Okay, that’s enough. Learning Italian can be difficult, but that’s true of any language and it’s not all difficult. There are things that make it easy too. That’s for next week.
That’s all for today’s episode. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more language learning tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content.
Ciao, salut, hwyl and bye for now.