I always have my doubts when I see ads that promise they’ll make you learn a language in 3 months. No, unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Learning a complex language like Italian requires time and practice. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be a traumatic experience but it needs time. When learning Italian, there are so many aspects to consider. I noticed that speakers of Latin-based languages such as French and Spanish are faster at learning grammar patterns. They have a great advantage as their native languages are similar to Italian. As a result, their fluency comes out more naturally but what they say is not always accurate or grammatically perfect. For example, Spanish native speakers tend to say “io aveva” (I had) instead of “io avevo”. In this case, they applied a Spanish grammatical rule to Italian and they made a mistake.

Standard Italian is also very much influenced by regional dialects, social changes, technology, and much more. Thinking about Italian – or any other language – as a set of fixed rules is wrong. There is a constant evolution in Italian language and the way we speak it in Italy and abroad. English and technology have had a massive impact on Italian. While other languages such as French created new words for new tech items, Italian borrowed those terms from English. <<Computer>> and <<mouse>> in Italian will remain the same. Then, this extended to business Italian where we integrate English words such as meeting in a conversation. I love to see my students’ reactions anytime I talk about the number of English words we use in Italian!

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