Is Italian Overrated?

General discussion about learning languages
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby sirgregory » Sun Oct 24, 2021 4:57 pm

einzelne wrote:
golyplot wrote:That depends on whether you speak English or not.


Yes, English is one of the obvious exceptions. But the OP is written by a native English speaker. And when Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean are mentioned as languages who have more 'economic power' I cannot help but laugh and ask: Do you understand how much time, energy and, hell, money you need to invest in order to rip some economic benefits from these languages (which are not even guaranteed)? After all, that's why YouTube polyglots live in palaces and make clickbait videos just for fun:)

Even with English, in my own native country I saw hundreds of people who were wasting their money on English courses, just to put it in their CV, while in reality they never used it (and they already had passable passive skills to read relevant documents for example).


Right. There have been some econometric studies estimating the wage premium of a second language in the USA and it usually comes out very low, maybe 2-3% (and not necessarily causal). That's a paltry benefit compared to the investment required to learn a language to a high enough level for it to be of any professional use.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby garyb » Mon Oct 25, 2021 8:56 am

I might just be trying to justify the years I've spent studying it, but for a "small" language of a "small" country Italian does seem to have a disproportionate influence, socially and culturally if not economically, especially in my own life. I've been friends with, dated, shared houses with, worked with, met while travelling, and overheard conversations on the street of more Italians than most other foreign nationalities put together. Cavesa's post sums up the reasons for this pretty well. It still upsets me a little that so many Italians consider their language "useless" and think I'm crazy to be learning it. Spanish is the only one that comes close, and a decade or so ago I encountered it all the time in my social life, but more recently I've found that Spanish-speakers stick more to their own communities.

The "glorious past and mediocre present" part seems more appropriate to French, although it's widely-spoken enough that it likely has a brighter future than Italian.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby Diomedes » Mon Oct 25, 2021 2:45 pm

garyb wrote:[...]

The "glorious past and mediocre present" part seems more appropriate to French, although it's widely-spoken enough that it likely has a brighter future than Italian.


I guess the expression "glorious past and mediocre present" sums up well the reason why italians (and so many others) sometimes neglect the importance of their own language. They believe their people were "dominant" or "glorious" a long time ago, and they cultivate some kind of nostalgia of this lost time. Perhaps it's a pretty universal thing (even among nations that were never really powerful), such as the "founding myth", and it's more a matter of nationality and self-esteem than a realistic evaluation (if a evaluation of this kind can really be made).

Based on these standards, the only two major languages that could perhaps fit the "highlander mindset" nowadays and not be consider "overrated" are english and chinese, and even so, arguments pro and con could be made "ad aeternum".
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby luke » Mon Oct 25, 2021 3:16 pm

Diomedes wrote:Based on these standards, the only two major languages that could perhaps fit the "highlander mindset" nowadays and not be consider "overrated" are english and chinese, and even so, arguments pro and con could be made "ad aeternum".

It may depend on who the "highlanders" are :lol:

Based on land mass, there are several other languages that may want to be considered, while cautiously avoiding being labled "highlander". :)

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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby El Forastero » Tue Oct 26, 2021 2:34 am

Speaking about professional cycling, Italy has a glorious past and a more than decent present.

I decided to study italian for cycling-related purposes: I love professional cycling and back in 2013 there was a colombian cycling team competing in Italy: As that time there weren't those races broadcast in spanish, I found them in italian and confirmed that I wanted to better understand them. So, my decision wasn't as pragmatic as one would expect (job, studies), but was based on strong motivations and I could reach a satisfactory level (C1)
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby s_allard » Tue Oct 26, 2021 12:50 pm

I rarely say things like this, and all hell may break loose, but I don’t understand why we are even discussing this topic on a board devoted to the learning of languages. How can a language be overrated or underrated ? Putting aside the fact that all school systems in the world teach some foreign language, nowadays English, and that migrants have to learn the language of the host country, people like us learn languages for all sorts of reasons that may or may not have anything to do with necessity or utility. I’m sure most people here are learning multiple languages for pure pleasure more than for anything else. Of course, they can be useful and required for certain jobs but I’m sure that’s not the case for most of us.

I have no need for any language other than French and English. I learn languages out of intellectual curiosity. Currently I’m learning Russian simply because I like the sounds of the language and aspects of Russian culture and history. I became interested in Italian because of opera and German because of history. I could see myself learning Swahili or Inuktitut or Haitian Creole if I had the opportunity. Every language in the world can be of interest to some learner. No language is overrated
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby Diomedes » Tue Oct 26, 2021 2:05 pm

s_allard wrote: [...] No language is overrated


I think Python is overrated. ;)
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby rdearman » Tue Oct 26, 2021 2:43 pm

Diomedes wrote:
s_allard wrote: [...] No language is overrated


I think Python is overrated. ;)

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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby Lemus » Wed Oct 27, 2021 4:55 am

Something that has not been mentioned yet that I can see but I think is playing a large role is how it is a heritage language for a pretty large portion of the population of the Americas, as well as some other parts of the world. If people are more likely to want to learn the language of their ancestors (which is clearly the case) then Italian is going to do well in places with a lot of people of Italian decent.

If I may generalize, people with a vague interest in the language of their ancestors would be the type of people likely to buy introductory language courses and not finish them, which perhaps helps explain why there are so many courses devoted to Italian. I have a harder time believing it is tourism since the reality is the major tourist sites are going to be full of people who speak English.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby dml130 » Wed Oct 27, 2021 11:36 pm

s_allard wrote:I rarely say things like this, and all hell may break loose, but I don’t understand why we are even discussing this topic on a board devoted to the learning of languages. How can a language be overrated or underrated ? Putting aside the fact that all school systems in the world teach some foreign language, nowadays English, and that migrants have to learn the language of the host country, people like us learn languages for all sorts of reasons that may or may not have anything to do with necessity or utility. I’m sure most people here are learning multiple languages for pure pleasure more than for anything else. Of course, they can be useful and required for certain jobs but I’m sure that’s not the case for most of us.


Personally, I don't mind these types of discussions, but I agree with the above in that I think the premise is often misguided (the idea being that economic potency necessarily means a language is more worthwhile to learn).

With Italian, I don't see how it can be overrated. Anecdotally, I've heard of ambitious parents sending their kids to Spanish/Mandarin/French immersion schools because they believe those languages will give them some kind of an edge later on. I haven't really heard of that for Italian. In that regard, you could maybe even consider Italian underrated.

In terms of numbers of speakers, according to this chart, Italian is the 22nd most spoken language in the world, and has more speakers than languages like Farsi, Thai, and any of the spoken Arabic languages (the most spoken being Egyptian Arabic).

So, I guess whether it's overrated or underrated really depends on your perspective and how you are defining those terms.
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