Is Italian Overrated?

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BeaP
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby BeaP » Sat Oct 23, 2021 7:57 pm

I agree with the main conclusion of the thread so far, it depends on where you live. I'm in Italy at the moment. Yesterday we got in the car at 5.30 in the morning, drove through the half of Hungary, the whole Slovenia and passed the Italian border at 11.30. We arrived at Bassano del Grappa at 14.30 in the afternoon. The distances in Europe are very small, my husband always says that we live in a museum. You drive a couple of hours, and you see something world-famous in a different country. I study Italian because I can use it. We like touring the countryside here and not everyone speaks English.
Economic reasons? In Hungary the only language that has economic benefit for the vast majority is English. It happened quite quickly, during my lifetime. When I was at school, everybody used to study German, because it meant better opportunities. By now it became a hobby language, just like French, Italian or Spanish. I'm not saying that it's impossible to benefit from German, of course there are some people who benefit from it, but they are a minority. Chinese, Japanese or Arabic is absolutely useless here, except in very special business cases or if you're a translator. On the other hand, because of the proximity there are some Italian firms that might find your language knowledge a plus, but I wouldn't call it a real economic benefit.
I myself learn languages mainly because of my interest in different cultures, and I can only learn a language that I can sooner or later use. Otherwise, I lose my motivation in a couple of days. The Italian culture is very rich, but unfortunately a lot of things (TV series, movies) can only be seen from Italy. They are not available in other countries. The Spanish are a lot better at promoting their films, and making it accessible to others.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby tarvos » Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:15 pm

No.

It's not.

You just don't really need Italian.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby Diomedes » Sun Oct 24, 2021 1:55 am

I'm joining the chorus. In my personal view, italian importance is underrated, not overrated.

I suspect this "italian overrated" thing is related to some sort of "highlander" mindset. Although italian is arguably not as useful as english, french and german (and also spanish in a non-european context) if we compare cultural and/or economic benefits or learning it, you probably will not find any other western european language (besides its "contender", spanish) that can belong to the "FIGS" group you mentioned, based on those same criteria.

On the other hand, if you are searching for a new language to learn and your reasoning conducts you to the conclusion that italian is overrated, I would suggest you don't study italian until you 1) fall in love with the language for some reason (and then it will not matter if italian is "overrated" or not) or 2) need to learn it for practical reasons, like work, study or moving there. If it's not the case, perhaps you should just focus in the languages you feel really connected to.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby einzelne » Sun Oct 24, 2021 2:47 am

I think what's really overrated is a mythical "economic gain" of knowing a foreign language. Because in the majority of cases it's almost non-existent.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby golyplot » Sun Oct 24, 2021 6:41 am

einzelne wrote:I think what's really overrated is a mythical "economic gain" of knowing a foreign language. Because in the majority of cases it's almost non-existent.


That depends on whether you speak English or not. Of course, there are a few other cases where it makes sense to learn languages economically, like poor EU members moving to Germany for work, but English is the big one. Non-native English speakers learn English for the economics and native English speakers learn foreign languages for fun.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby Ug_Caveman » Sun Oct 24, 2021 10:17 am

Well that depends - I've designed an engine for sports cars that runs on mozzarella, so Italian might be quite useful for me ;)

Italian also has value in Switzerland, Monaco, The Vatican and San Marino - so locally to Europe I'd say it has more value than Spanish does. Obviously worldwide Spanish (and Portuguese) kick Italian's butt, but to write off Italy which still has some pretty important industries (and Switzerland which is obviously a big financial player) would be wrong.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby tungemål » Sun Oct 24, 2021 10:40 am

Yes, I think Italian is overrated insofar as it enjoys enormous prestige. And also French. I suspect this prestige goes back to the 19th century or earlier, when these countries were dominant in European art and high culture. In the case of Italy it of course also has the overpowering history of the Roman empire. The reasons for learning Italian are still valid, and there are many. I might learn Italian someday.

But there could be just as good reasons for learning other languages in Europe. For instance Polish? or Norwegian? Depends on what people, country and culture you want to engage with. Norway has also got nature, history, culture, media, and food. The only drawback with Norway is that we've got worse weather. But you might call it more interesting weather - sometimes we've got three seasons in one day.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby einzelne » Sun Oct 24, 2021 1:49 pm

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).
Last edited by einzelne on Sun Oct 24, 2021 4:07 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby golyplot » Sun Oct 24, 2021 2:25 pm

tungemål wrote:But there could be just as good reasons for learning other languages in Europe. For instance Polish? or Norwegian? Depends on what people, country and culture you want to engage with. Norway has also got nature, history, culture, media, and food. The only drawback with Norway is that we've got worse weather. But you might call it more interesting weather - sometimes we've got three seasons in one day.


Norway also has the drawback of being one of the most heavily Englishcized countries.
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Re: Is Italian Overrated?

Postby einzelne » Sun Oct 24, 2021 4:00 pm

tungemål wrote:Yes, I think Italian is overrated insofar as it enjoys enormous prestige. And also French. I suspect this prestige goes back to the 19th century or earlier, when these countries were dominant in European art and high culture.


I don't think so. French nouvelle vague and Italian neorealism happened in the 20th century. (Not to mention that the history of French and Italian cinema cannot be reduced to these two movements; it's way reacher). Modernist literature (Proust is just the tip of the iceberg), surrealism, semiotics, structuralist and post-structuralist thought and philosophy — take it out and see the humanities departments in ruins all over the world. If you want to do something in the history of philosophy or Classics — you cannot ignore the secondary literature in French and Italian. French Annales school, italian operaismo... the list can go on.

You might not be interested in all these things, which is totally fine (I love Spanish literature but not that much to learn Spanish). All I'm saying that approaching languages from the point of you of 'economic benefit' is misleading. You don't get that much economic power from that, expect in rare cases. It's another silly myth on par with: "you, STEM guys, should really learn Latin because it's such a logical logical language! It will help you to think logically" Uh-huh, like hell it will!
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