Twelve reasons to study Italian
1. Knowledge of Italian is important for people in business, the arts, technology and many professions. It also is useful for high school and college students planning careers in art history, music, linguistics, education and international relations.
2. Italy is one of the top ten economies in the world and is a member of the G7 Group of the wealthiest democracies of the world.
3. Italy is a world leader in tool manufacturing, with advanced technologies in robotics, electromagnetic machinery, shipbuilding, space engineering, construction machinery and transportation equipment.
4. Italy has long been a magnet for the tourism industry. Italy is the fifth most visited country in international tourism arrivals.
5. People mainly visit Italy for its rich culture, cuisine, history, fashion and art, its beautiful coastline and beaches, its mountains, and priceless ancient monuments.
6. Italy contains more World Heritage Sites than any other country in the world.
7. Italy is a world leader in the culinary arts, interior designs, fashion, graphic design, furniture design, etc. Those planning careers in such fields greatly benefit from knowing Italian.
8. According to UNESCO (the cultural and educational agency for the United Nations), over 60 percent of the entire world’s art treasures are found in Italy.
9 Italian is the language having the best phonetic fit.” It is the easiest foreign language to read, write, and pronounce because there is only one sound per letter of the alphabet (and four consonant blends). For young learners, the easier the language, the better. Italian will not compete with the learning of English, it will enhance the learning of English.
10. Students preparing for the SATs who have studied Italian tend to score higher on vocabulary and grammar. The reason is simple: Italian developed from Latin and an estimated 60 percent of English vocabulary comes directly from Latin.
11. Italian is in fact the Romance language closest to Latin. Knowledge of Italian, therefore, will go far in helping one to understand the whys and wherefores of the English language, which has a very large percentage of words of Latin derivation.
12. Italian is also the language closest to English (Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, 1987). Italian will therefore serve to enrich our students’ knowledge of English vocabulary since it contains many cognates and roots that resonate with familiarity.
