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Italian
Spoken by: ?
Spoken in: Italy
Language family: italic

Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino, and an official language of Switzerland, Croatia, and Slovenia. It is spoken by about 66 million worldwide.

Description[]

Italian is a romantic language spoken primarily in Italy.  It has many similarities to Latin, Spanish, and Portuguese. 

Phonology[]

Grammar[]

Italian uses the Roman alphabet and most of the words in the language are latin-based.  The vast majority of words in Italian end in a vowel (a,e,i, o, or u).  Words are not pluralized by adding an 's' to the end as in many other romance languages.  Instead, the final vowel changes from an 'a' to an 'e' or from 'o'/'e' to 'i'. 

Orthography[]

Common difficulties[]

The Foreign Service Institute has classified Italian as a "World" language. It is estimated that learning Italian to a Professional Working Proficiency in the language (a score of Speaking-3/Reading-3 on the Interagency Language Roundtable scale) will take an average of 24 weeks (600 class hours).[1]

Resources[]

There is an Foreign Service Institute course for Italian.

Sublearning - Italian to English movie subtitle flash cards

There is a Duolingo course for Italian.

Pimsleur offers a course in Italian.

Rosetta Stone offers a course in Italian.

Italian Grammar Lessons -  Free online Italian grammar lessons in six-graduating levels.

References[]

  1. U.S. Department of State; FSI's Experience with Language Learning; https://www.state.gov/m/fsi/sls/c78549.htm
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