10 Reasons to Fall in Love with the Italian Language: By Award-Winning Author; Dianne Hales

innamoramento

falling in love

by Dianne Hales

No English word quite captures the sensation of innamoramento, of falling head-over-heels in love, way beyond bewitched, bothered, and bewildered. But that’s what I am—an innamorata, enchanted by Italian, fascinated by its history, tantalized by its adventures, addicted to its sounds, and ever eager to spend more time in its company.

Why fall in love with this luscious language? Here are my top ten reasons:

1. Italian is “beautiful, fun and sexy.” That’s how people perceive Italy and its language, Stephen Brockman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, observes in an essay called “In Defense of European Languages.” “Why not?” he adds. “I can’t see anything wrong with that.” Neither can I.

2. No other language is more romantic. All the Romance languages evolved from the volgare (vernacular) of ancient Rome, yet none may have so many seductive ways of expressing amore: Ti amo, mio tesoro (I love you, my darling). Ti adoro (I adore you). Sei l’amore della mia vita (You are the love of my life). Vieni qui e baciami (Come here and kiss me.)

3. Everything sounds better in Italian. An ordinary towel becomes an asciugamano; a handkerchief, a fazzoletto; a dog leash, a guinzaglio. In English garbage is trash. In Italian, it’s spazzatura.

4. You can use your hands—a lot! In Italian speaking without gestures is like writing without punctuation. Hands become commas, exclamation points and question marks. Who even needs words when a tug at a bottom eyelid translates into "Attenzione!" ("Watch out! Pay attention!") and a straight line drawn in the air as “Perfetto!” (For more Italian gestures, click here.)
http://becomingitalianwordbyword.typepad.com/becomingitalian/2010/10/talking-italian-with-your-hands.html

5. Italian has become the new French. With only an estimated 60 to 63 million native speakers, Italian ranks fourth among the most studied languages—after English, Spanish, and French, which Italian now rivals as a language of culture and refinement.

6. You can immerse yourself in an Italian masterpiece. You can’t sculpt like Michelangelo, paint like Leonardo, or design like Armani. But you can read and speak the language that 14th century poets—Dante first and foremost—crafted from the effervescent Tuscan vernacular.

7. Speaking Italian may be the closest many of us get to singing. What makes Italian so musical are its vigorous vocali (vowels): An Italian “a” slides up from the throat into an ecstatic “aaaah.” Its “e” cheers like the hearty “ay” at the end of hip-hip-hooray. The “i” glides with the glee of the double e in bee. The “o” is an English “o” on steroids; the macho “u” lunges into the air like a penalty kick from Italy’s national soccer team, the Azzurri (Blues).

8. Italian may be our universal mother tongue. Dating back almost three millennia, its primal sounds—virtually identical to those that roared through Roman amphitheaters thousands of years ago—strike a chord in our universal linguistic DNA. According to some scholars, Italian may come closer than any other language to expressing what it means to be human.

9. You’re never too young—or too old—to learn Italian. Within weeks in an all-Italian class, English-speaking preschoolers understand everything happening around them. It takes longer as we get older, but learning a second language later in life offers an extra benefit: it helps stave off dementia.

10. Italians. British author E.M. Forster urged visitors to drop “that awful tourist idea that Italy’s only a museum of antiquities and art.” His advice: “Love and understand the Italians for the people are more marvelous than the land.” Indeed they are. And if you’re of Italian descent, cherish Italy’s language as a marvelous part of your heritage.

Dianne Hales is the author of the best-selling La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language.

Get the Book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0767927702?ie=UTF8&tag=becomitali-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0767927702

Click below to hear more about how I fell in love with Italian:
LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIIYHQngqe4

Tweet

Growing Up Italian American and Bilingual.

Growing up Italian American has its privileges. We are brought up with an intense passion for life, which includes cooking, family, education and culture. With culture comes language, while growing up my parents struggled to speak their new language, which was English.

Both native Italians were forced to learn English while trying to survive in America. My parents learned English through conversation and just everyday interaction with Americans. My father was too busy trying to make a living to take classes or indulge in any English form of education. My mother on the hand, was home raising four children while speaking only Italian and trying to help my siblings and myself do homework in English. Needless to say, my sister was the eldest and went to kindergarten speaking Italian. English at that moment was her second language.

My mother who was the more active involved parent when it came to school had to adjust to speaking to our teachers and understanding what the American curriculum was and how her children had to learn the English language. I give my mother a ton of credit because she absolutely never acted scared or inferior when trying to learn English. Instead, she had such a great interest in learning English, that I almost feel like she learned English through our Language Arts in school. My mother is now enrolled in college and is about a semester away from receiving her Bachelor's degree. What an amazing accomplishment coming from a moment when she didn't know any English.

As the years progressed in the education system for myself and siblings, we all had a great strength in succeeding in Language Arts. For some reason, English was our strong subject, even though at home we spoke Italian and English. Actually, we spoke 'dialect' plus English, so it was an actual combined language. There was no separation of these tongues. Then, as we would often visit our family in Italy, you were then put in another situation where you were speaking proper Italian, then dialect, then English.

The strengths about being bilingual speak for themselves. As I travel to Italy often and other parts of the world, I feel fortunate to be able to have another outlet of communication. I also feel that my upbringing in the Italian culture and education in the Italian language also add value to my credibility and career when applying or interacting in the professional world. Being bilingual is a wonderful asset to own and if any parent has an opportunity to educate their child or if the parent wants to learn another language as well, it can only help not hurt. Its an asset to own in these modern times.

Here is a great article outlining the benefits of raising bilingual children:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j5-F8j-yYdLNUrlLhObAy0vbd4SgD99IBQS00 Tweet

Award Winning Author, Dianne Hales, Writes An Amazing New Book About the Italian Language, "La Bella Lingua."

Award winning author, Dianne Hales has written one of the most beautiful and informative books I've read in a long time about the Italian language. Dianne, fell in love in Italy while vacationing there and was quickly captivated by the Italian language and its cultural history.

Dianne is a seasoned author with many successful books and articles in top publications in the country. When Dianne returned from Italy, she was determined to find, learn and expand her own knowledge about the Italian language, which led her to write her most recent book, "La Bella Lingua."

What I find personally so fascinating is that a non-Italian becomes so engrossed with the Italian culture and feels the incredible need to educate themselves on the language, traditions and culture. I am always so proud of the Italophile community.

As you dive deeper into the "La Bella Lingua" you not only learn about how Dianne came to understand the Italian language but how her dedicated research and love for the Italian culture played an important role in the way the book was written, researched and organized. To further add credibility, Dianne traveled and visited with top Italian academic institutions and experts to learn the true history behind the Italian language and its culture.

For me, I always find the "dialects" most interesting, and I actually learned in this book about the different dialects and words for simple things like, "child." What I know as a Calabrese, someone in Venice says differently, of course when we're all speaking informally, but when we're out in public, we speak our poetic and proper Italian language.

"La Bella Lingua" is a wonderful, educational read for anyone interested in learning more about Italy and its rich history behind the most sought after and romantic language in the world. Personally, I would buy this book for anyone traveling to Italy, its beautiful, well written and inspires you to learn, speak and understand the Italian language and culture.

You can buy "La Bella Lingua" on Amazon. : http://tinyurl.com/pyvcqy

Check out Dianne Hale's Site http://www.becomingitalian.com/ where she talks about her journey to learning and experiencing the Italian culture.

Tweet

Will the AP Italian Classes Ever Make It Back Into Schools?

Learning Italian and being able to speak it-- is an amazing asset to have. When cultural opportunities are cut out of school programs, what happens? The idea that cultural education gets a back seat once again is a reality, especially Italian education. I can't express how annoyed and just disappointed I am that the Italian language programs have been cut from many schools because of non funding from government agencies on the Italian and American sides.

The majority of money provided to the program was funded by Italian American organizations here in the USA, but the remainder was a no show on the Italian side. Now, I would like to down play any negative comments toward the Italian government because in these economic times we know that money doesn't grow on trees. So, really I ask with all the fund raisers, donations and yada, yada we do here in the Italian community, why can't we come up with the full amount without Italian assistance?

I'm not a financial expert nor do I claim to be one, but really do we need the actual Italian government financial backing or are we just fishing for a backup? Why is this the last straw and now the AP program is swept under the carpet? I say where there is a will there is a way. Again, this just my opinion and I know there is a lot of red tape involved but once again prominent Italian Americans donate away and where is the money going? Who is it benefiting?... if we can't even a get a language program off the ground? Now, I worry..will the language classes ever make it back into schools?

Read more here:
http://tinyurl.com/9nxryc Tweet

AP Italian Language Courses Being Cut From Schools.

Just when we thought we had made progress in keeping and maintaining language courses in schools, it turns out with unsecured funds, the College Board has decided to cut the Italian language programs. It appears the Italian Language Foundation was able to raise substantial amounts of money but was unable to come up with the balance, due to I'm sure political red tape. What else? This news is just unacceptable. So many prominent Italian Americans spend or should I say waste money on "donations" or "charity" (because they think they're donating to a worthy cause) then the money is somehow squandered into these "faux" organizations and now the language board can't come up with funds to satisfy the balance...? Ridiculous. There is I am sure more to the story, but from where I'm sitting, sounds like a bunch of you know what.

Get the full story here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/07/AR2009010703693.html Tweet