Un Consiglio Buono‏ and some words of encouragement.

When you want to learn Italian... Think positive!!!

Hopefully by now most of you are well on your way to learning Italian. You've made your Italian flash cards and are studying them often, you're listening
to Italian every day, you're watching Italian movies/TV, listening and singing along with your Italian muscial CDs at home and in your car and above all
reading Italian aloud at every chance you get. This is key. Reading Italian aloud is speaking Italian. You will be pleasantly surprised how much reading
aloud will help your learning to speak Italian.

Another thing good to know is the fact that there are so many words in English which are similar in Italian, in meaning, and almost in spelling.
Of course we all know that Italian is descended from Latin, the language of ancient Rome, as are Spanish, French, Portuguese and several other languages.
A large part of the English language, forse/maybe more than 50%, comes from Latin and French/Latin through the Norman-French conquest of England in 1066
and is therefore similar to Italian in much of its vocabulary. This is importantissimo to know because you will find as you learn more and more Italian that there
are thousands of words that are almost the same as English. All you have to do is get used to their Italian pronunciation.

When you read new material in Italian, or when you hear Italian spoken, you will constantly encounter many words that you may not have studied but that
you already know. E fantastico! Fortunato/fortunate per te/per you. fortunatamente/fortunately, mente=ly. So forget about differences in Italian/English.
Think of similarities! Be adventurous, exploit those similarities, they are gifts to English speaking students who want to learn Italian.

English is not purely a Germanic language folks. In fatti/In fact only 29% of English has Germanic origin, 15% from various other sources and a walloping 56%
of English words ultimately derive from the Latin root! So it would greatly help your subconscious learning process to think of Italian/English as...dialects of Latin.
Also think of English and Italian as being cousins and Italian and Spanish as being brothers. What the hell! We English speakers are semi-Latinos!!! There goes
the neighborhood. LOL!

Here are a few examples to illustrate what we're talking about: (Remember think positive and don't listen to anyone who tries to tell you Italian e dificile.)


Many Italian words look very much like English words and have either the same or a similar meaning.

These words are called Parole simili in Italian and Cognates in English. They have fairly minimal differences in spelling so that they are easily recognisable:


necessario (neh-chehs-SAH-ree-oh)
necessary
idea (ee-DEH-ah) idea
intelligente intelligent
studente student
cinema cinema
importante important
monumento monument
persona person
professore professor
possibile possible

And now, how about some patterns?
Have a good look at the English words endings, because that will help you "guess" how that word will be written in Italian. For example:

-tà -ty -zione -tion
qualità quality condizione condition
quantità quantity attenzione attention
città city nazione nation
università university inflazione inflation
abilità ability abbreviazione abbreviation
autorità authority promozione promotion




-za -ce -oso -ous
pazienza patience geloso jealous
apparenza appearance famoso famous
esistenza existence generoso generous
indifferenza indifference nervoso nervous
conferenza conference delizioso delicious


I will give you now some adjectives — all of them cognates of English adjectives — which can be used to describe either a male or a female (they do not change their form in the singular when used with female or male nouns):

difficile intelligente orribile sensibile eccellente intellettuale
ottimista indifferente egoista terribile popolare sentimentale
elegante interessante realista entusiasta materialista progressista
naturale responsabile idealista


The following adjectives on the other hand - though also cognates of English adjectives - change form when used in the singular according to the gender of the noun they qualify: using —o ending when masculine and —a ending with feminine nouns:

aggressivo/a geloso/a nervoso/a sincero/a
delizioso/a generoso/a onesto/a timido/a
famoso/a impulsivo/a romantico/a

A little word of caution: some Italian words (luckily not many) which look like English words, have different meanings. These are the falsi amici or false cognates:

parente relative (not parent) genitore=parents
libreria bookshop (not library)

Another invaluable lesson Villa, grazie mille!