Submitted by Stephen Harris on the 2015 spring semester study abroad program in Rome, Italy…
I’m only taking Italian 101, so I have far from a mastery of the language. However, there are some interesting things I’ve noticed.
The first is that all vowels are pronounced softer than their American counterpart. Starting with “a” (ah), each vowel is pronouced the same way you would the next one one the chain. So after “a” is “e” (a), “i” (e) and “o” (oo).
The second is how extremely descriptive the language is. In English, we have two indefinite articles: a and an. Italian has four. In English, we have one definite article, “the”. Italian has seven. Each different Italian article accounts for the gender of the word (masculine/feminine), singularity/plurality, and the arrangement of consonant over vowels.
The third is something my Italian professor told us when we were having pronunciation troubles early in the class. “No mumbling!” he declared. “To speak Italian, you must use your entire mouth.”
Overall, the Italian language seems to make its words more lofty and elegant than the practical semantics of English. Italians seem to shout at each other as part of a normal conversation, and I think the reason isn’t because they’re all angry, but because the language allows itself to be passionately, loudly spoken without coming off as angry. The nuance of meaning in Italian semantics gives it this quality.
If this makes little sense, sorry. I’m grasping at the outer edges here to explain it, because honestly, understanding a language in all of its complexity is usually difficult even for those fluent in it, let alone someone who’s spent only one month with it. I’m hopeful, though, that I’ll learn it.
