Learn what languages Italian is close to
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Intro |
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| Michael: Is Italian similar to Spanish? |
| Ofelia: What other languages is it close to? |
| Michael: At ItalianPod101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine the following situation in which a language learner finds himself confused between Italian and Spanish. Ben Lee (@hero-son), a college student, picks up the Italian classic, the Divine Comedy, at an international bookstore, but finds it surprisingly hard to read. He turns to his friend (@college-friendm), who is shopping with him, and asks, |
| "Is this in Italian?" |
| Ben Lee (@hero-son): È in italiano? |
| Dialogue |
| Ben Lee (@hero-son): È in italiano? |
| Federica Fontana (@college-friendm): No, è in spagnolo. |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Ben Lee (@hero-son): È in italiano? |
| Michael: Is this in Italian? |
| Federica Fontana (@college-friendm): No, è in spagnolo. |
| Michael: No, it's in Spanish. |
Lesson focus |
| Michael: The Divine Comedy, or |
| Ofelia: La Divina Commedia, |
| Michael: was the first book to be written in Italian in the thirteenth century by |
| Ofelia: Dante Alighieri. |
| Michael: In Spanish, the title is remarkably similar to the title in Italian: only one letter is omitted. Such a small difference is due to the fact that Italian and Spanish are closely related, as they are to French or |
| Ofelia: Francese |
| Michael: and, to a lesser degree, Portuguese or |
| Ofelia: Portoghese. |
| Michael: Italian is one of the "Romance languages," or |
| Ofelia: lingue romanze, |
| Michael: along with other languages like French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and Catalan. These languages form a subgroup of the Indo-European language family, which includes a diverse range of languages from Sanskrit to English. |
| Italian originally comes from Latin, or |
| Ofelia: Latino, |
| Michael: and is also the closest modern language to Latin. The Italian spoken today developed in the 13th and 14th centuries, when the Tuscan/Florentine dialect was popularized by the literary works of Dante or Boccaccio. |
| Italian is now the "official language," or |
| Ofelia: lingua ufficiale, |
| Michael: of Italy and the small country of San Marino, and is one of the official languages of Switzerland and Vatican City as well. Italian is also spoken regionally in areas of nearby countries, such as France and Croatia. |
| Cultural Insight/Expansion |
| Michael: There's another question we sometimes hear at ItalianPod101.com. |
| Ofelia: Does knowing Italian make it easier to learn other Romance languages? |
| Michael: To some extent, yes. Italian is the closest language to Latin, so some of the basic grammar rules in other Romance languages work by following the same principles. For example in all the Romance languages, nouns, or |
| Ofelia: nomi, |
| Michael: get inflected depending on the number and the gender. Another important element is the high level of lexical similarity, which indicates how much words from Italian and other romance languages are alike. |
| Ben Lee thought he was reading the Italian version of the Divine Comedy, because the title sounds almost the same. This is a case of lexical similarity and phonetic similarity, which is another element of closeness between these languages. |
| An Italian person could read Spanish and understand most of what they read, but listening to the language is much more challenging. |
| Other languages related to Italian also have many common words, but without practice or some knowledge of the language, it's almost impossible to understand them. French and Romanian, for example, are quite similar to Italian due to their common origin. Many Italian words come from French and Spanish, so many common words can be found throughout these languages as well. This can make it easier to acquire a large vocabulary in French or Spanish if you already know Italian, but learning these languages still requires intensive study. |
| Speakers of Spanish often find Italian a relatively easy foreign language, or |
| Ofelia: lingua straniera, |
| Michael: to learn, because Italian vocabulary and phonology look quite similar to their Spanish counterparts. |
| However, while some of the words may have the same meaning, others do not. For example, the word butter, burro, in Italian actually means "donkey" in Spanish! |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Ofelia: A presto! |
| Michael: "See you!" |
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