Italian Language

I had been learning Italian for only three months when I went for a holiday to Italy. Standing on a pier overlooking the gorgeous Ligurian coast I took a deep breath and tried out my Italian on an older couple nearby. I ventured a simple question about walking to the Cinque Terre. They were utterly thrilled and spent the next fifteen minutes painstakingly describing how I could find the station and where to get off to begin the walk. They were determined that I would understand and deserved a medal for their patience. For me that experience, the ability to connect to people in a real way, was almost better than the walk itself.

You don’t have to speak fluent Italian to bring a smile to the face of a bartender or a shopkeeper. Even a couple of phrases will open the door to a very different experience.

Here are some friendly phrases to practise:

• Buongiorno, come va?               Good morning, how are you?
• È buonissimo!                             To the waiter about the food – It’s really good
• Un caffè per favore                     To order an espresso coffee at the bar
• Uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque    Numbers are always useful
• Grazie mille!                                Thank you very much

Italian is a relatively easy language for an English speaker to learn. It’s a Romance language, like French, based on Latin so many words are already familiar to English speakers. When in doubt I simply add an ‘o’ to the end of the words and see if it brings a smile to face of the person I’m talking to!

Fifteen years down the track, my Italian is competent. People routinely compliment me, but I’m pretty certain it’s not about my language skills and my accent because I know I’m not really that good at it; really they are just thrilled to have a foreign visitor engaging with them in their own language. It certainly makes any trip to Italy a richer and more wonderful experience.

So pick up a phrase book, try one of the many language-learning apps that are now available or enrol in a short Italian course before your next holiday. This advice comes with a serious warning though: once you start learning a little bit of Italian, you may not be able to stop!

For those that have caught the language bug and are already learning Italian, you should consider the Vacanze in Italiano Tour that takes you to Puglia. It’s an immersion language tour aimed at intermediate speakers to one of the most beautiful regions in Italy.

Take your Italian on holiday!

By Annie Kiddell

Annie is one of Luca’s oldest friends and has been a long-term contributor to Italian Tours. Her love of Italy and all things Italian, as well as frequent trips all over Italy have made her an invaluable writer, researcher and general sounding-board for us.
Here is Annie applying a very scientific methodology to the research task of finding the best sfogliatella in Naples.