How Italian Has Enhanced My Life

I’ve been asked this question many times and I decided to write a blog post about it. I have studied many different languages at different levels but Italian and Spanish are likely to remain my strongest because I started learning them before all the others. The benefits of knowing both these languages to an advanced level has given me opportunities I would otherwise not have had, although Italian seems to have opened more doors to a variety of experiences for me.

I studied Spanish at university and Italian to a much lesser extent. After finding work within an international company in the European Finance Department, I had the opportunity to move from working with our Spanish clients to the Italian ones. Firstly, I had to travel to Milan frequently for several months to work on a project and would return home at weekends. In Milan, I had to speak Italian the whole time from day one, but my level wasn’t so good back then. I was dependent on my Spanish to help me learn fast. I bought myself a Spanish/Italian pocket dictionary because I found it quicker to think in Spanish and translate into Italian, rather than think in English first. This really helped. I also had some sympathetic colleagues who knew my Spanish was much better and I would say “I don’t know that word in Italian but it’s X in Spanish”. Most of the time they’d understand what I wanted to say. In this period, I discovered a lot about Italian body language which is worth another post by itself!

After around 3 months of working alongside native speakers, my Italian level had reached that of my Spanish. I remember when I arrived I could only understand about 20% of the television. By the end of the project, I could understand about 80% of the television. It was tough, I had headaches after work for several weeks until the language became more natural and I no longer had to really concentrate to understand. Following on from this project, I returned to work full-time in the UK alongside Italians and therefore still spoke the language for most of the day at work. It was during this period that I visited Sorrento and Sicily and was completely at ease speaking Italian the whole time. I was first exposed to the Sicilian language on this trip. The waiter at my hotel thought it would be fun to teach me some Sicilian phrases because I could already speak Italian. More on that later.

Fast forward a relocation and several job changes and I found myself in a UK company with one big customer in Italy. This customer had always had to communicate with our company using their only English-speaking employee. However, when I started there, I was given this account to manage and the customer was very surprised that now everything they needed to ask could be done in Italian. In fact, they wrote to one of the directors about this and as a result, I received an “Employee of the Month” award. The interesting thing about that is that I was not even employed there for my language skills. This all happened by chance.

Now onto my personal life. As I mentioned above, I went on trips to Sorrento and Sicily. I continue to visit Italy on a regular basis and have been to many parts of the country: Venice, Rome, Sardinia, Florence, Pisa, Verona, Lake Garda, Puglia and soon the Egadi Islands!

I then found Italki, my favourite website where I can have skype lessons or just conversations in many languages. Of course, I started using it to maintain my level of Italian. By doing this, I met Eleonora, a tutor from Sicily. She told me that she also gave lessons in Sicilian and I started to think about my trip to Sicily 10 years earlier where the waiter was teaching me some phrases in Sicilian. I was tempted to learn more. I booked one lesson, then another and then that led to doing a dedicated 90 Day Language Challenge. By the end of that, I made a 15 minute video speaking with my tutor in Sicilian. My tutor did not speak English and with a lack of materials for Sicilian, I had to learn the language just by speaking sessions on Skype and learning through Italian. I look forward to visiting Sicily again and being able to speak Sicilian when I am there!

Another Italian tutor I found on Italki was Marija and in one lesson I was telling her about my Sicilian challenge. She told me she was from a town near Naples and that her native language was actually Napulitano. I couldn’t resist knowing more and having some lessons. So again I found myself booking an initial lesson in this mysterious and interesting language and again I managed to do a full 90 day challenge learning it. My videos were found by an Italian journalist who interviewed me about my challenges. It was most unusual for them to hear of a foreigner learning these smaller languages. Since my challenges, Italki actually opened up new language categories for Sicilian and Napulitano and my teachers tell me that they have gained many new students as a result of them finding my videos. Later on, I completed another course in Greko (Calabrian Greek).

As well as all the wonderful Italian friends I’ve made and being able to travel alone in parts of Italy that don’t see many foreign tourists (eg Puglia), I always seem to have some fun travel experiences as a result of knowing the language. For example, I got early entry at the Leaning Tower of Pisa by ensuring I spoke to the staff in Italian whereas the tourists addressing them in English were being ignored and left in a long queue; I knew what was going on when all passengers removed unexpectedly from a train near Sorrento, whilst one English-speaking tourist thought he’d just shout at the staff in English anyway; I was able to shock a taxi driver who kept pressing the meter button to overcharge a me as a foreign tourist, as she thought I probably couldn’t challenge her in Italian; I’ve had fabulous food because I’ve been able to discuss recommendations of local dishes in depth and I’ve been able to deal with medical problems in Italy. I even got myself an Egyptian Arabic book from Italy and learned it through Italian because I couldn’t find good enough resources on the English market. Recently I got to meet the famous Italian dancer, Giovanni Pernice, and I only spoke to him in Italian and Sicilian.

The Italian language is one of my life-long companions. I highly recommend learning it and I look forward to many more years and fun experiences in the country and with the language. Who knows, maybe I’ll learn a few more of Italy’s minority languages in the future.

Useful Links:

• Smart Italian have launched a series of stories in Italian for beginners. I have reviewed the content myself and the stories are enjoyable to read. They are set in lesser-known parts of Italy and include a lot of cultural information too. I learned a lot of new things myself when reading these! There are exercises after each chapter, some new grammar points to learn and it includes access to Quizlet flashcards. For a little extra, you can also buy the audiobook version.
• Italki is the website where I find my tutors for my Skype lessons. You can register on this link here and after taking your first paid lesson, you will receive some free credits to use towards another lesson.
• The Intrepid Guide‘s online course Master Common Italian Phrases for Travel. This is a fun, interactive and realistic approach to learning Italian specifically for travel. You’ll also get access to a private Facebook group to interact with the teacher (author) and other students. Click here to access the course.
• For Sicilian resources please see this post here.
• To read or listen to interviews I’ve done in Italian click here.
• A 3 Language Video I made in Italian, Catalan and Slovak (strongest to weakest!).