I've always wanted to learn Italian. The problem is there are no schools to learn this language in the place where I live. The only possible solution is to learn it by myself. I've got some books, CDs etc. and one TV channel in Italian I have access to - RAI UNO. If we add my determination - will it be enough to learn Italian?
I can say that I love the sound of Italian and pronunciation seems to be easy for me. Unlike German of French pronunciation. I've tried to learn German and French but my knowledge is passive. I can understand even difficult texts but when I listen to people speaking G. or F. I understand NOTHING, even if they talk about simple matters. As it comes to Italian, I can distinguish separate words although I don't speak Italian at all. And this is what encourages me as well as relatively simple grammar.
Have you ever learnt a language without a help of a teacher?
no, italian is a very difficult language to learn
I don't think it's difficult at all. Grammar is pretty simple after all.
It's easy for people that speak Spanish or French, but it's probably more difficult for English speakers (because Italian is a highly inflected language, such as French or Spanish).
Gay and Gay Marriage is Sin!
"Ye that love the LORD, hate evil..." -Psalm 97:10
If you speak already any romance language it will be AMAZING EASY to learn. But if you don't, it might take more effort of your part to learn it.
But don't worry Italian is so much easy than spanish and french and if you put some effort to it, you can learn it by yourself without trouble. (I did the same with English and I had no previous knowledge of any germanic tongue (I am mexican thus my mother tongue is Spanish and my second language its French). So don't worry you have what it take right? The desire that's the most important thing when it comes learning other languages.
Sigma, if your native language is Spanish, why do you say Italian is easier than Spanish?
I have a question for any Italian speaker. When I was little my grandma (1st generation American of Sicilian descent) always used the word (spelled phonetically) "desgrutsiada" (the "grut" rhymes with "mut"). She said she made it up, but does it sound like any real Italian word/Sicilian slang? She used it to mean “disgraceful.”
Bubbler, I'm just guessing, but 'desgrutsiada" sounds a little like 'disgrazia' (the 'z' is rather like an English 'ts'). 'Disgrazia' (like Spanish 'desgracia') usually means misfortune, but I suppose that in some contexts it may seem to have a similar meaning to disgrace. (Also that may be a dialectal meaning.) Disgraziata' would be a feminine adjective form or a female person.
I meant to add that I'm not an Italian speaker. My native language is English, but I can usually understand written Italian. As for how hard learning Italian would be, I agree with the earlier comments about its being relatively easy (at least to read). If you already know another Romance language, then learning to read it fairly well shouldn't take much work. Even English alone -- because of its many words from French and Latin -- would help a good bit in recognizing Italian words.
Speaking it would be more difficult because you'd have to learn all the inflections, and actually recall the words rather than just recognize them. The sound system is relatively simple, though, and the spelling relatively regular.
Pok, like you I found that I could understand the gist of spoken Italian even when I had very little knowledge of the language. I'm referring to radio broadcasts. If I'm not mistaken, there are many different Italian dialects, and understanding them all might be much more difficult.
Bubbler, I speak Italian, though not natively. I am very sure she was saying "disgraziata" or "disgraziato" (depending on whether you are male or female.) - meaning just what you (and Gjones2) thought... disgraceful/ungrateful girl/boy.
Pok: I am American. I started learning Italian in college when I met my husband (from Italy). Sadly, I only started in the last year of college, so I was able only to take two semesters of Italian. I am now teaching myself. Every sound made in Italian is made in English, with the exception of their version of the "r". However, since I took Spanish for about nine years consecutively before that, it did not pose a problem for me. Try "rolling" your "R".
Advice for Pok: It's hard to keep yourself motivated when you are beginning to learn any language ESPECIALLY if you are doing it on your own, but it is not impossible if you really have the drive.
Some resources:
http://forum.wordreference.com/forumdisplay.php?f=4
The WordReference Italian-English forum
http://www.radioitalia.it
RadioItalia - Only Italian Music and Programming (I watch video Italia sometimes on there)
http://www.rai.it
In addition to Rai Uno, there is Rai Due and Rai Tre.
All of these I gave you will use Standard Italian, which is the language of the government. It derives from the Florentine dialect and is the same as used by Dante.
There are indeed many dialects, but don't trouble yourself to learn them now. You can learn some later if you want to. I inadvertantly sometimes say things in the dialect of Carrara, simply becasue my husband is from there, but thankfully, it is close to standard Italian so I can make myself understood in every region. Because TV is broadcast in Standard Italian, most people of our parents generation (I'm 23, so I speak of people who are say... 50 and younger) will understand their own city dialect and then Standard Italian.
In boca al lupo! (Good Luck)
Cro- magnon:
Cuz without any knowledge I have no trouble understanding movies and text in italian and I have never been in an italian class. Also a friend of mine mastered the language in only 6 months without being in Italy.
And the italian pronunciacion of some italian people seems so much clear than the spanish pronunciancion for me. The text that I saw were pretty simple in the ortography. Also I heard from some non native speaker of both italian and spanish that was so much easier for them to learn italian rather than spanish. (But with the knowledge of italian learning spanish became more easy).
Italian is difficult if you want it speak it perfectly.
The spelling is pretty tricky. Drop one letter from a word, and they will consider you ignorant ...to many double consonants...
The pronunciation is pretty tricky as well. Standard language (spoken in Tuscany and Rome) has 2 types of e (open and closed one) and 2 types of o (open and closed one), that is, 7 vowels (unlike 5 vowels in Spanish):
venti (with open e) = winds
venti (with closed e) = twenty
...
Grammar is pretty difficult, with many irregular verbs, but the most difficult thing are the prepositions (DA can mean both FROM and TO, depending with the words used with it; TO is said A with some words, but IN with other words, IN is said IN with some words, but A with some words, with much less logic than in English or Spanish)...
And, the most difficult thing: Italians don't like speaking the standard language (unless those from Tuscany and Rome) so many of them use non-standard pronunciation and spelling. North of Italy uses non-standard spellings like perchè (instead of standard perché) and ventitrè (instead of ventitré), which reflects non-standard (Northern) pronunciation. But many times this pronunciation is considered sloppy, even by people from Northern Italy...Italians like their dialects a lot (even more than Germans) so, Northern Italy and Southern Italy is not fond of Standard Italian (spoken in Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio/Rome/ and Marche provinces). Northern usage is pretty different, but it is tolerated just like NYC English (not a very standard accent, but tolerated) because of $$$$$$$ this region produces.
For good italian singers try Syria or Eros Ramazzoti, both of them are from Rome.
Nek's Italian and Laura Pausini's accent is very Northern-sounding.