Is Italian a difficult language to learn?

Italian is known as the language of music because of its use in musical terminology and opera; numerous Italian words referring to music have become international terms taken into various languages worldwide. Its influence is also widespread in the arts and in the food and luxury goods markets. 

Italian was adopted by the state after the Unification of Italy, having previously been a literary language based on Tuscan as spoken mostly by the upper class of Florentine society. Its development was also influenced by other Italian languages and, to some minor extent, by the Germanic languages of the post-Roman invaders. The incorporation into Italian of learned words from its own ancestor language, Latin, is another form of lexical borrowing through the influence of written language, scientific terminology and the liturgical language of the Church.

Unlike most other Romance languages, Italian retains Latin’s contrast between short and long consonants. Almost all native Italian words end with vowels, a factor that makes Italian words extremely easy to use in rhyming. Italian has a 7 vowel sound system (‘e’ and ‘o’ have mid-low and mid-high sounds); Classical Latin had 10, 5 with short and 5 with long sounds.

In Italy, almost all the other languages spoken as the vernacular—other than standard Italian and some languages are spoken among immigrant communities—are often imprecisely called “Italian dialects”, even though they are quite different, with some belonging to different linguistic branches. 

The only exceptions to this are twelve groups considered “historical language minorities”, which are officially recognized as distinct minority languages by the law. On the other hand, Corsican (a language spoken on the French island of Corsica) is closely related to medieval Tuscan, from which Standard Italian derives and evolved. Italian dialects form a continuum of intelligibility, with the geographically distant ones being mutually unintelligible. 

During the 14th century, the Tuscan dialect began to predominate because of the central position of Tuscany in Italy, and because of the economic power of its most important city, Florence. It was not until the 19th century, however, that the language spoken by educated Florentines spread to become the standard language of a newly unified Italy. With progressive increases in literacy, standard Italian became gradually accepted as the national language in the 1950s.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of Standard Italian became increasingly widespread and was mirrored by a decline in the use of the dialects. An increase in literacy was one of the main driving factors (one can assume that only literates were capable of learning Standard Italian, whereas those who were illiterate had access only to their native dialect). The percentage of literates rose from 25% in 1861 to 60% in 1911, and then on to 78.1% in 1951. In addition, other factors such as mass emigration, industrialization, and urbanization, and internal migrations after World War II, contributed to the proliferation of Standard Italian. The Italians who emigrated during the Italian diaspora beginning in 1861 were often of the uneducated lower class, and thus the emigration had the effect of increasing the percentage of literates, who returned more educated than before! Even though the Italian dialects have declined quite a bit in the modern era a number of people continue to communicate mostly in regional dialects, while standard Italian remains the only written language.

• The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) USA, suggests 575-600 hours ~23-24 weeks to learn Italian by an English speaker. 
• Italian and English share many cognates as many words have been adopted from the English language.
• Another reason why Italian is easy to learn is pronunciation. Unlike the pronunciation in French, for example, where you pronounce certain syllables in different ways, Italian pronunciation is quite logical. There are certain rules you will need to learn, but these are very straightforward.

With a few exceptions

• The Italians rolled R’s.
• Italian has many articles and prepositions. These articles are usually combined with the prepositions of the verbs which go on to form new words and that’s when things become tricky.
• Italians use a lot of subjunctive verbs, in situations of doubt, desire, opinion, etc.

Language difficulty depends on a lot of factors such as but not limited to the following:

• Motivation or necessity to learn the language! Can you pull on despite adversities or are you getting embarrassed and overwhelmed about making mistakes and feeling deterred from learning the language!
• Perseverance to learn a language. Whether you are steadily moving ahead with realistic goals or are burning out due to over-ambitious goals! 
• Time invested in learning! This becomes way critical, because you are in a responsible job, married, or have kids, parents, grandparents to look after! Amidst all these, how many hours you can spare each day, is a point of great concern. 
• Studying regularly every day versus studying on weekends!
• Support at Home. Do you have a supportive environment at home or are you drawn into household chores?
• Prior Linguistic Knowledge of any other Romance Languages.
• A conducive learning environment. Are you living in a country that neither has as many resources to support your learning nor considers it a priority! 
• Learning methodology – Are you learning from an app, books, offline or online? The learning process depends on a series of factors: cognitive factors (language aptitude, learning strategies), affective factors (attitudes, motivation, anxiety), metacognitive factors, and demographic factors. 
• Identification of that one unique way you are able to grasp better. 
• Availability of reliable resources. Do you have access to good learning resources or are you struggling with off and on resources?
• Age. They say that children learn languages the best. But that doesn’t mean that adults should give up? The older you get the more difficult it is to learn to speak a language like a native. But no one knows exactly what the cutoff point is—at what age it becomes harder, for instance, to pick up noun-verb agreements in a new language. In one of the largest linguistics studies ever conducted—a viral internet survey that drew two-thirds of a million respondents—researchers from three Boston-based universities showed children are proficient at learning a second language up until the age of 18, roughly 10 years later than earlier estimates. But the study also showed that it is best to start by age 10 if you want to achieve the grammatical fluency of a native speaker. As quoted in Scientific American
• Comfort in their Country of Residence. Are you in a Romance speaking country that supports you wholeheartedly – have you opted for travel immersion or community learning! 

There are elements of the Italian language that are simple and then there are those that are little tricky.

Get the Rhythm of the Language to Master the Tones. Focus on listening. Try to listen to whatever content you can get hands-on. Reading helps you learn vocabulary, but listening helps you connect with the language and get prepared to speak. Listening comprehension is the core skill necessary in order to engage in conversation with people.

Keep your learning light and engaging! Watch movies once in a while, sing Italian Songs, do whatever it takes to maintain your rhythm and learning consistency. Do not give up, take a break if something pushes you to discouragement; and approach it again with an alternate well-informed strategy. 

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