{"id":388,"date":"2012-12-12T06:32:24","date_gmt":"2012-12-12T05:32:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rickzullo.com\/?p=388"},"modified":"2017-06-20T19:43:57","modified_gmt":"2017-06-20T17:43:57","slug":"italian-for-english-speakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/italian-for-english-speakers\/","title":{"rendered":"Italian for English Speakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, after all the little jokes that\u00a0I’ve\u00a0made about teaching English to Italians (you can read here if you need to be reminded: Teaching English to Italians<\/a>), the rebuttal has arrived at last. \u00a0Italian for English speakers: turnabout is fair play, after all.\u00a0 I take no credit (or blame) for the content of this post.\u00a0 Any disparaging remarks from my Anlgo-American friends will be appropriately redirected to the source.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you <\/em>La Professoressa:<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s only after Rick asked me again and again that I accepted to share some of the greatest challenges that I encounter when teaching the Italian language to Anglophones. Not that I\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0tempted. I simply thought I\u00a0couldn’t\u00a0find the time to write an article that would likely be as long as an epic poem. But eventually I decided to avenge all the Italians\u00a0who’ve\u00a0been losing sleep over inexplicable phenomena like the \u201ch\u201d sound\u2013 that actually has no sound in words like heir<\/em> and honor<\/em>.\u00a0 Perhaps some of my compatriots have even sought out a psychologist in their attempt to repress their anxiety over producing the \u201cth\u201d sound by putting their tongue between their teeth. You see, this little gesture, basically biting your own tongue, makes them feel stupid. \u201cWhy would I want to look like an idiot?\u201d they go whining to their shrinks.<\/p>\n

That said, let me make a disclaimer: my post might sound a bit too harsh to an American audience. Please be assured that it is only intended for fun. We Italians tend to overstate, we\u2019re culturally not half as pressured as you are with that spotless political correctness, and ultimately, well, we don\u2019t really like to bite our tongue\u2014neither literally, nor figuratively.<\/p>\n

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So, let\u2019s have a look to some of the preliminary difficulties that English speakers meet along their tortuous path to learning Italian. One above all: grammar. Sure, I am a language teacher and therefore very concerned about grammar. Already in high school I had earned the nickname of \u201cBrainy Smurf,\u201d that will probably give you a hint about how much<\/em> I am concerned about grammar. I will also admit that Italian grammar is undoubtedly much more complex than the English.<\/p>\n

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However, let me tell you frankly: lack of grammar education strikes me a major fault in the American school system. I have given private \u2013 and very expensive \u2013 lessons to some big fish in some important companies, receiving some salaries with some zeros in the net box, who could not detect the subject in a sentence, no matter their level of Masters or MBA. Forget about direct or indirect objects. So my very first challenge with 80% (or more) of my American students is that I first have to teach them their own<\/em> grammar. Get me right. For sure they can still speak English a great deal better than me; but when it comes about learning another language, well, you must know your whereabouts. So if you want to learn Italian, go to your folks\u2019 basement, open up that childhood memory box, find your elementary grammar book, and brush it off\u2026now!<\/p>\n

As per initial obstacles, something I have to always fight against is this absurd, misleading notion that \u201cItalian and Spanish are so close that they\u2019re almost the same.\u201d It drives me insane when I say that I\u2019m Italian and somebody replies \u201cItalia! [read: \u025ctalia] iHola! \u00bfComo estas?\u201d<\/p>\n

Insane.<\/p>\n

Later, when some of these individuals attempt to speak Italian, no doubt they\u2019ll go pick a rabbit \u2013 a Spanish rabbit \u2013 out of their hat any time their vocabulary lets them down. And makes me run for the hills.<\/p>\n

We’re all Italian, buddy–including me!<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Last but not least: \u201cI am Italian, too!\u201d They don\u2019t fool me anymore. They only remind me of that funny episode of Family Guy \u00a0whose best quote is \u201cPeter, you can’t speak Italian just because you have mustache.\u201d<\/p>\n

[responsive_video type=’youtube’ hide_related=’1′ hide_logo=’1′ hide_controls=’0′ hide_title=’0′ hide_fullscreen=’1′ autoplay=’0′]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=t30JzS0LHpk[\/responsive_video]<\/p>\n

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I understand and have the maximum respect for the Italian pride that\u00a0hasn’t\u00a0been lost in the generations of descendants of immigrants. But the sad truth is, the language<\/em> has certainly been lost. For good. And in any case, it was probably never even Italian at all. It\u2019s mainly a corrupted form of the Neapolitan dialect. \u00a0Capish, salud, goombah<\/em>, are not Italian words. And, hey, even \u201c\u2019O Sole Mio\u201d is Neapolitan.<\/p>\n

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One thing that makes me feel no sympathy for my English speaking students is indeed the vowels pronunciation. Think about this simple fact. Both languages count 5 vowels (OK, English 5 and a \u00bd, including the \u201cy\u201d). However, Italian counts 5 sounds for vowels \u2013 yes, five, that makes sense,\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0it?\u00a0 Whereas English counts about 27 different sounds. \u00a0And I have to say \u201cabout\u201d because even the most authoritative sources do not all agree on the exact number. So when I teach a student that \u201ca\u201d sounds always<\/em> \u201cA\u201d like in the word \u201calpha\u201d, \u201ce\u201d sounds always<\/em> \u201cE\u201d like in the word \u201cecho\u201d (and it\u2019s not by chance that the NATO and the IATA have picked so many words derived from Greek), and so on, I would expect that student to feel relieved.<\/p>\n

But no. So many of them insist with a show off of unsolicited creativity that only causes – often hilarious – misunderstandings and spontaneous – as well as embarrassing – puns. I had a student who could not let go of his wide range of vowel sounds. For example he did this curious thing with the word \u201crestaurant\u201d. One ristorante<\/strong><\/em>, many ristoranti<\/strong><\/em>, in Italian. Since he could not help pronouncing the \u201ce\u201d of the singular form as you would in English in the word \u201cemail\u201d, nor he could get over the fact that our \u201ci\u201d sounds like \u201cIndia\u201d always<\/em>, and in fact never<\/em> as \u201cigloo\u201d, he basically always inverted the plural and singular all the times.<\/p>\n

The range of pronunciation challenges is certainly long and diverse, but I can probably cut it short because basically you just have to read in opposite key everything that Rick wrote about Italians speaking English. But let me just throw a little salt on the wounds of a couple of my favorites: letter \u201ct\u201d sounding \u201ctch\u201d, which for example transforms the world \u201ctutto\u201d (everything) in \u201cciuccio\u201d (pacifier); the lack of ability to make a double consonant sound, which in fact leads to spelling mistakes that at this point get unnoticed, like the famous \u201cmama mia.\u201d No, my friends\u2026it\u2019s \u201cmaMMa mia!\u201d However, this does not produce major misunderstandings like for example penne<\/em> versus pene<\/em>. We appreciate that you are a fan of our penne<\/em> (a shape of pasta), but we really get puzzled if you go around saying without at least a little discretion that you really like pene<\/em>. \u00a0Because, well, that means penis<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019ll leave you on that final fact for now. I had promised I would present my article to Rick today and I have. But it looks like I\u2019ll need a second episode. Told you this\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0going to be easy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, after all the little jokes that\u00a0I’ve\u00a0made about teaching English to Italians (you can read here if you need to be reminded: Teaching English to Italians), the rebuttal has arrived at last. \u00a0Italian for English speakers: turnabout is fair play, after all.\u00a0 I take no credit (or blame) for the content of this post.\u00a0 Any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6,29],"tags":[35,52,39,48,32,34],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}