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Five Reasons to Learn Italian

Posted: 8th June 2017 08:47

Italy is home to 50 UNESCO World Heritage Sites of architectural and cultural beauty.  These wondrous sites are essential sight-seeing for design, art, history, archaeology, architecture and art history students.  Learning Italian will make your exploration practically easier and more authentic, as you can converse with locals confidently, and it will allow you to understand the context and meaning of the arts.  For certain students, such as art historians, grasping the Italian language is imperative to mastering your subject, as well as enjoying a holiday of magnificent culture. 

Language of Fashion

Italian fashion is distinctive and elegant, and has been the undisputed leader of international style.  What the Italians don’t know about fashion isn’t worth knowing!  Unsurprisingly, fashion houses across the world are connected to Italian institutions and every aspiring fashionista heads to the country at some moment in their career.  From Gucci and Diesel to Fendi, and Dolce & Gabbana, Italy produces top quality talent and designs which are globally sought after.  The country also hosts the renowned Milan Fashion Week and operates countless magazines.  Mastering Italian opens opportunities to work directly in the famous Italian industry, or helps you stand out from the crowd when applying for overseas positions. 

CV Gold

70 million people speak Italian and it's not just spoken in Italy – there are Italian-speaking communities in Malta, Libya, Slovenia, US, Argentina, Australia and Croatia.  If you're looking for a job in business, you'll find that speaking Italian is particularly useful.  Recent research found that Italian was the fourth most frequently requested language by employers, and it appeared in 14% of job advertisements as a pre-requisite.  With strong multinational companies in the automotive industry, coffee, finance and electronics headquartered in Italy, learning Italian can make you an attractive overseas collaborator or allow you to find work in Italy itself. 

Hand in Hand with Latin

The Italian language is the closest to Latin, especially in terms of vocabulary.  It also retains Latin's contrast between short and long consonants, and stress remains distinctive.  Although it was a gradual process, Classical Latin spoken by the Romans morphed into Italian.  Latin is an indispensable advantage for many professions and subjects including law, classics, medicine, politics and archaeology.  Italian is the easiest of the two languages to learn, and can therefore be a great springboard to taking up Latin in the future due to their likeness.  If you already speak Latin, Italian is the next natural step in terms of historical linguistic development.

A Beautiful Language

The distinctive poetic quality of the Italian language is what makes it ideal for opera and literature, but this lyricism also makes Italian easy to grasp.  Italian is a particularly straightforward language to read, write and pronounce because it has a good phonetic fit.  With only 25 sounds made in just 33 ways, the language is more formulaic in contrast to others, like English, which has 40 sounds which can be spelt in more than 1000 ways.  This also makes Italian a great language to learn if you are dyslexic.  You’ll also appreciate the beauty of opera before you know it – whether you belt out Nessun Dorma or not.
 

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