Is learning Italian difficult?

Is it difficult to learn Italian? Many aspiring students find this question interesting. Because they estimate their chances of actually being able to understand and speak Italian in the future. Of course, Piet Pieters from Bergambacht or Jan Jansen from Stolwijk also wants to achieve his goals when he starts learning a language. But the answer to whether Italian is difficult depends on a number of things.

What's your native language?

Many of the readers of this blog will have Dutch as their mother tongue. That means that Italian is a little further away from you. Dutch is a Germanic language, together with German, Danish or, for example, Frisian.

Italian belongs to another language family, that of the Romance languages. Along with, for example, French, Portuguese and Spanish. If you have had French or Spanish in your final exam package, you have an advantage.

Although you will see that sometimes it can also be a disadvantage. Even in the advanced groups, someone sometimes says 'oui' instead of 'si' or 'donde' instead of 'deaf'. So you will have to master the grammar of another language family.

Yes, you could make it easier on yourself by studying German or Danish. Chinese or Arabic, on the other hand, would have been a lot more complicated. These are not even Indo-European languages ​​and they are grammatically even further away from Dutch.

How well do you learn other languages?

Many of you will have learned English in school. Although English does not belong to the Romance language group, you are already familiar with some techniques that belong to learning a language.

Acquiring vocabulary, doing grammar exercises, learning irregular verbs or doing a listening exercise. Keep up with the times as you start learning a language again. The way languages ​​are taught and languages ​​are acquired today is different from the way it was 30 years ago.

People who are in fact bilingual because they speak or speak a dialect at home also have a linguistic advantage. For example the Twents or Limburgish.

Are you smart? Are you willing to learn?

First of all, you need to ask yourself what your goal is. Do you want to be able to converse academically about Italian medieval literature and Italian? Republic can read (C2 level) or are you satisfied if you can say what you think and feel in daily interaction with people and read a popular website? (B1/B2 level).

Intelligence is not unimportant, but it is also something that is not leading. The fact is that the Italian courses mainly appeal to the higher educated and that the higher educated are also less scared off by the grammar or the hours-long exercises in a book because of their years of theoretical study.

Personally, I think it's a shame that more MBO students don't devote themselves to studying Italian. Because I am convinced that students with a VMBO-T/MAVO or an MBO background can also pass the university Italian CILS exams that test your command of Italian.

Education in language acquisition used to be particularly focused on grammar and on a translation of C2 level and thus reserved for the higher educated. This is what my father had to do when he studied Latin Translate Caesar, because it had a succinct language, which was considered easy. This has now become obsolete and there are also bilingual VMBOs and MBOs that use a language as a means in practice.

Language acquisition, science now knows, is only partly understanding the structure behind a language. For an equally important, if not greater part, it is dedication, daring to make mistakes, setting small goals, curiosity and perseverance.

Study skills and study attitude. And these qualities can be acquired by anyone. In short, it depends to a large extent on your own goals and commitment whether learn Italian is difficult!