Is Italian a difficult language to learn? Or, if we ask that question in Italian: “L'italiano è una lingua difficile da imparare?”
We won’t keep you waiting. Here is the answer: “Sì, l'italiano è una lingua facile da imparare” (Yes, Italian is an easy language to learn).
Let’s look at why this is the case.
Even if you haven’t started learning Italian, you can surely recognize some words from those Italian sentences.
| English | Italian | Latin |
|---|---|---|
| language | lingua | lingua |
| difficult | difficile | difficilis |
Both Italian words in the table have the same Latin origin as their English equivalents.
You might be curious why English has so many Latin-derived words, given that English, as a Germanic language, didn’t evolve from Latin like Italian did.
Well, English didn’t always have lots of Latin-based words. The Old English word for “difficult,” for instance, is “earfoþe” (a rather difficult-looking word indeed).
Old English and Italian have little in common, but modern English is much closer to Italian. English has changed a lot. That’s why Old English texts, like the epic poem Beowulf, are now translated into modern English.
English became more similar to Italian after the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The Normans (who spoke a dialect of French) invaded England. During the subsequent occupation, many French words entered the English language.
When those French words entered the English language, they replaced some of the original Germanic terms from Old English. As English became more like French, it also became more like Italian because French and Italian are similar languages that both come from Latin.
The multitude of Italian words that are similar to their English translations make it much easier to learn Italian.
We are not talking about English words borrowed from Italian, like pizza, pasta, zucchini, vendetta, and opera. Nor are we talking about Italian words borrowed from English, like weekend, computer, and smartphone.
We are talking about words like “persona” (person), “società” (society), and “famiglia” (family) —and plenty more that jump out at you when you browse the thousand most common Italian words.
Italian nouns have grammatical genders (either masculine or feminine). That is also the case in French, and German even has a third grammatical gender (neuter).
Grammatical gender tends to be easier to predict in Italian than in French because so many Italian nouns end in either ‘-o’ or ‘-a’, and the ending provides a clue about the gender of the noun.
Most Italian nouns that end in ‘-o’ are masculine, for example, “libro” (book), “cielo” (sky), and “sogno” (dream). But there are some exceptions to the rule, such as “mano” (hand).
Most Italian nouns that end in ‘-a’ are feminine, for example, “casa” (house), “scuola” (school), and “strada” (road). But there are exceptions to this pattern as well. For example, the following nouns are masculine: “problema” (problem), “programma” (program), and cinema (cinema).
French also has patterns that relate the endings of nouns to their grammatical gender. But in French, there are so many more patterns because there are many more different endings for nouns.
The endings of German nouns are also related to their grammatical gender, but there are many different endings and three different grammatical genders in German.
So basically, in terms of grammatical gender, Italian is easier than French or German.