Study Italian Abroad

Why not learn the very romantic Italian language in Italy? Italian is a direct descendant of Latin and the closest to it of any current language.

There are 75 million native speakers of Italian with around 45 million others who have learnt it as a second language. Worldwide, Italian is the fifth most taught foreign language and is spoken in many more places than Italy alone, making it a really great idea to learn Italian in Italy! Italian is an official language in Italy, San Marino, Switzerland, Malta, Vatican City, and regionally in Croatia and Slovenia!

Italy's long history of city-states, there were marked and distinctive dialects of Italian for a number of cities and these were all to develop along their own lines for a few hundred years. It wasn't until Dante Alighieri and his "Divine Comedy" poetry, that lead to a unifying of the Italian language. Dante was from Florentine but he mixed his dialect with the influences of southern ones, particularly Sicilian. His works, about which you will learn much as you learn Italian in Italy, were so widely read and influential that they became the standard by which all educated Italians could communicate.

You'll find that to learning Italian is generally fairly accessible to English speakers. Italian uses the same alphabet but does away with 5 letters: j, k, w, x, and y. They appear occasionally in loanwords such as "whisky" or "taxi" but everything originally Italian uses only 21 letters, making it nice and simple to learn.

There are a number of words in English that are Italian in origin with many in particular referring to music, architecture and cuisine. There are many common words as well like "graffiti" which comes from the the Italian "graffiato" meaning scratched. "Studio" comes from the Italian word for study. "Motto" is the Italian word for pledge and "bankrupt" derives from "banco" (bench) and "rotto" (broken). Learn Italian in Italy and you'll find yourself quickly picking up the language and its quirks!

Learn Italian in Italy, and discover the its passion for food!

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