Is Italian Overrated?

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Xenops
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Is Italian Overrated?

Postby Xenops » Sat Oct 23, 2021 2:38 am

(Xenops poses this question as she is on her 2-day-streak learning Italian on Speakly)

So if I look at the FIGS languages, or the JACK ones (Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean--someone else came up with acronym), I am led to think that Italian has the least amount of modern economic power. Most of the others have greater media production as well (I'm thinking cinema and TV shows). So I have to wonder: why is Italian so popular to learn?

I read the rather harsh quote somewhere (if someone knows the reference, I would be grateful ):

Italy has a glorious past, a mediocre present and no future.


My paraphrase. Because many (most?) people learn a language because of opportunities or economic gain, why is Italian so popular? Yes, it has lots of culture--is that enough? Yes, it sounds pretty--is that enough? Because it's there? Well, so is Spanish.

What are your thoughts? :) Persuade me from my current opinion. ;)

P.S. I was already aware of this thread: Why is Italian more popular than Portuguese?
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby Monty » Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:46 am

I could name 20 countries with zero future whose languages are popular with learners. Most of those countries don't have much of a past either, let alone a glorious one.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby Cavesa » Sat Oct 23, 2021 9:05 am

Italian is probably the language with the best ratio efforts/value for me. For the efforts I put into it (minimal, especially compared to anything I'd have to invest into learning Korean or even German to the same level), I got tons of value. Tons of opportunity to use it and to profit from it in some way.

Xenops wrote:So if I look at the FIGS languages, or the JACK ones (Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean--someone else came up with acronym), I am led to think that Italian has the least amount of modern economic power.

Perhaps, but that is not just bad, from language learning point of view. The Italian job market crisis and economical situation is driving so many people abroad, that you get tons of practice opportunities almost anywhere in Europe! And Italians are not always automatically switching to another language, which is another huge advantage.

So, I've got a lot of opportunities to speak Italian, mostly for fun. But a few times at work too. Contrary to most languages you've just listed, the natives are well spread in my region, don't automatically switch, and they are also well spread in the society. This simply cannot be said about the French natives, who don't really move out (but they have several countries of their own, so that doesn't matter as much) and extremely often switch to English, it cannot be said about the Korean natives mostly staying back at home far away, or about the Arabic natives, who (no offense meant) are mostly staying in the lower spheres of the society and also building their own parallel world, where they don't really need you to speak Arabic too.

The presence of Italians in such numbers leads even to potential professional uses of the language, it depends on what do you want to do with the language and situation. And don't forget that in spite of various economical issues, Italy is still a rather rich EU country with lots of inhabitants, one of the best countries for tourism on the planet (which plays a huge role in the popularity of the language), and much more accessible as a business partner than many of the countries far away.

Most of the others have greater media production as well (I'm thinking cinema and TV shows). So I have to wonder: why is Italian so popular to learn?

Oh, do they? It depends on your tastes and your criteria of quality. For example, Italian has excellent popular music and really in the language, and definitely more of it than for example German. And I think the same is true about the cinema and tv. It's cinema is more accessible to many european minds and hearts than the Korean one, which in spite of its excellence (that I keep hearing about) is usually just for a circle of fans (the current success on Netflix is an exception, which may or may not set a new trend). Italian is presenting all its culture much more than for example China, which parrots empty phrases about rich and varied culture, but really underperforms in presenting it (and presents a heavily filtered version of it).

I read the rather harsh quote somewhere (if someone knows the reference, I would be grateful ):

Italy has a glorious past, a mediocre present and no future.

It has a glorious past, a solid present in Europe, and the future within my probable lifetime is not going anywhere.

My paraphrase. Because many (most?) people learn a language because of opportunities or economic gain, why is Italian so popular? Yes, it has lots of culture--is that enough? Yes, it sounds pretty--is that enough? Because it's there? Well, so is Spanish.


You are seriously underestimating both the economical and personal opportunities of Italian in Europe. In Europe, it wins over Spanish in most aspects. Spain is not that much economically stronger than Italy, the Spaniards are a bit less spread than the Italians, Spain is for many common uses simply more distant than Italy. And the importance of the Latin America for europeans, that is a matter of opinion.

In the US or Canada, it is really different. Italian is definitely losing the comparison to Spanish, and it's just a language for the Italian culture fans or people wanting to travel to the extremely beautiful country.

In most other regions, such as India (as a forum member recently showed in a very interesting thread) or most african countries, neither of them matters.
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TL,DR: In Europe, Italian is heavily underrated, and Spanish overrated, I'd say they should be much more equal on the language learning market. In the rest of the world, Italian is just for culture fans or tourists (and there is nothing bad about that!).
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby gsbod » Sat Oct 23, 2021 9:39 am

Italy has a seat at the G7 (unlike, say, Spain), which suggests to me that it is still a big hitter in terms of the economy.

Also it's a stunningly beautiful country with an amazing food culture, rich history, and rich and varied cultural output from opera to cinema. It's only let down a bit by the output from its national TV channels in my opinion. But then, I tend to think most TV is rubbish.

So yes, learn Italian.

Edit: still can't use apostrophes correctly. Stupid possessive pronouns.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby rdearman » Sat Oct 23, 2021 10:25 am

Of all the languages I have learned or attempted to learn Italian is my favourite by far. I can speak every day to an Italian if I wanted to. London is full of Italians. There is a ton of books and films available. TV shows can be good too. It is fairly easy for an English speaker to learn. You get Spanish and Romanian for 1/2 price.

Even if I never visited Italy (but I do because it's amazing) knowing what I know now it is the one language I would definitely learn.

But the main reason I would recommend it is that in the 20 years I have been speaking to Italians I have never met an Italian I didn't like.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby thevagrant88 » Sat Oct 23, 2021 10:30 am

Not really. Italian hasn’t been professed to be a super “important” business or economic language for…(checks watch) a while.

If your language learning concerns are primarily economical, Italian probably has more weight if you actively live or spend a lot of time in Europe already rather than using it as a means to gain access to overseas’ markets. Could probably be a nice resume booster if you already have Spanish and/or French under your belt considering it would take way less time to “add” Italian than it would be to learn an Asian language.

Having said that, Italian certainly isn’t an “invalid” language to learn or anything, it just might not serve this one purpose as well as others.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby iguanamon » Sat Oct 23, 2021 2:50 pm

I require no criteria to learn a language other than "is learning it useful to me?". If I relied on economic reasons or number of speakers, I certainly would've never learned Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol; or French Creoles; or Catalan. These languages have added to my cultural knowledge, awareness and joy in life. Learning any language brings a lot to the table, regardless of its perceived usefulness.

For me, with my language background, learning Italian would be significantly easier than say, learning German or Greek would be. If I were to travel in Italy, it would be nice to speak it on at least a basic level. I'm sure if I were to learn Italian, I would get drawn into the culture by default. I only rarely run into Italian-speakers here, almost never.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby golyplot » Sat Oct 23, 2021 3:18 pm

thevagrant88 wrote:Not really. Italian hasn’t been professed to be a super “important” business or economic language for…(checks watch) a while.

If your language learning concerns are primarily economical, Italian probably has more weight if you actively live or spend a lot of time in Europe already rather than using it as a means to gain access to overseas’ markets. Could probably be a nice resume booster if you already have Spanish and/or French under your belt considering it would take way less time to “add” Italian than it would be to learn an Asian language.

Having said that, Italian certainly isn’t an “invalid” language to learn or anything, it just might not serve this one purpose as well as others.


I think this is partly due to the US vs Europe perspective as Cavesa mentioned. In the US, Italy has little use, while Spanish is extremely important. But at least Italian doesn't require much effort if you've already studied Spanish.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby Le Baron » Sat Oct 23, 2021 3:50 pm

I've never formally studied Italian, but picked up lots from casual perusing and watching a lot of Italian films, mostly poliziotteschi, but also classics. There are a lot of great Italian films worth watching. Also a lot of reading material of all sorts. Maybe not TV, but I don't watch much Dutch TV either because it's not very interesting.

Also because of the rather large exodus of Italians during the 19/20th centuries there are, as rdearman says, many Italians elsewhere around the world.

The modern view of Italy being a small economic player in Europe was not the case before the EMU, where Italy had a good home market and financial market. People rather forget that it was originally Germany that was considered the economic 'sick man of Europe' (later falsely applied to the UK retroactively) because of its debt to GDP ratio, which in any case was irrelevant...but there we have EU monetarist ideology at work.

I don't care about the perceived economic value of language learning. Not that it isn't a useful reason for some people, but if that was the criterion most people would be learning English and a mere handful of other regulars seen as ladders into a career.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby thevagrant88 » Sat Oct 23, 2021 3:54 pm

golyplot wrote:
thevagrant88 wrote:Not really. Italian hasn’t been professed to be a super “important” business or economic language for…(checks watch) a while.

If your language learning concerns are primarily economical, Italian probably has more weight if you actively live or spend a lot of time in Europe already rather than using it as a means to gain access to overseas’ markets. Could probably be a nice resume booster if you already have Spanish and/or French under your belt considering it would take way less time to “add” Italian than it would be to learn an Asian language.

Having said that, Italian certainly isn’t an “invalid” language to learn or anything, it just might not serve this one purpose as well as others.


I think this is partly due to the US vs Europe perspective as Cavesa mentioned. In the US, Italy has little use, while Spanish is extremely important. But at least Italian doesn't require much effort if you've already studied Spanish.


Pretty much. It’s also worth noting that the reason Italian was one of the top 5 most studied languages in the US has always been due to cultural reasons.
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