German here, married to an Italian whom I met at high school. I taught myself Italian in secret during summer holidays so I could surprise her. (That was 43 years ago, we have three adult kids and a grandson now.) I had of course a lot of motivation, but I also thought it was really a thankful language to learn. Full disclosure: I was best in class in English and French already when I started, because I had discovered already how to teach myself languages. But I have tried other languages as well afterwards, and I think Spanish is more difficult than Italian, not to mention Slavic or even other languages of the Germanic family, which should yet be easy for a German like me. The phonetics are easy and the spelling represents it very truly, once you learn the difference between g/c and gh/ch. Compare this to the clusterfuck of English spelling and pronunciation, or even French or Scandinavian languages. The grammar is straightforward if you have mastered another Romance language already, and if you are used to German grammar. (English people complaining about grammar in other languages are like pedestrians complaining about the difficulty of driving. Go to driving school and get a license, is the answer.) Speaking Italian like a native of course is difficult. First of all, what native? When I had learned Italian, my in-laws just switched to Sardinian when they didn’t want me to understand. An uncle of mine who was a policeman once wanted me to listen in on conversations between gang members in an Italian restaurant. I had to tell him that I wouldn’t understand a word, since they would probably speak in a southern Italian lingo and use a jargon on top of that. And lastly, when I later spoke with Italian colleagues working at the Milan subsidiary of the corporation I worked at, they would tell me I spoke with a Sardinian accent, but after talking an evening with them, I would phone my wife and she would tell me that I had picked up a Milanese accent from them!
The Italian language is like Swahili in the number of vowels and consonants symmetry. Here is the translation to English: Brazilian Portuguese has had orthographic reforms that make it increasingly resemble Italian, but with nasal sounds like French. Examples: Optic: ótico (BR); ottico (IT) Bread: pão (BR); pain (FR)
In standardized dutch, all words have gender or are neutral, but it is in no way expressed in the language. However, in many fluently spoken Flemish dialects the male article changes subtly. So we do have a sense of gender without really realizing
very interesting with 'il problema', its the same in spanish where 'el problema' going by the rules should be feminine but my understanding is that words ending with 'ma' are from greek neutral and sounded masculine so they get the masculine article
Is it possible that the article for "il problema" is due to the same principle for compound words we have in Italian such as "La pallavolo"? What I'm trying to say is that the latter example takes the article from the first word in the compound word "palla", hence feminine although the word itself ends in "o", while the former might take the article from "pro" even though it ends with the vowel "a".
Hi Metratron. Love your videos. I just saw a video that highlights Maltese to sicilian/Italian and arabic. The first half mostly compares Maltese to Arabic. The later part is mostly arabized sicilian/Italian Maltese words. It would be interesting to get your take on it. The video is by Langfocused and is titled Can Arabic Speakers Understand Maltese. ruclips.net/video/s1DyDRn4_Fw/видео.html
Does the gender "mismatch" between article and end of word in Italian ever happen due to the word's origin? i'm just thinking in comparison to the Spanish example "el drama," where it's masculine because the word comes from Greek rather than Latin.
I decided to learn Italian later in life. I had heard it's easy (second only to english in European languages) but that's an exaggeration. I am a greek speaker so phonetically and grammatically it is not that difficult (but again not "grammarless" like english). But it does have tricky parts like the congiuntivo, ci, ne and a lot of idiomatic expressions. In any case a beautiful language. PS Also why don't you guys go back to the old forma di cortesia (second plural). It makes much more sense than Lei and would make the imperative simpler.
The rolled R has been a bane of mine since I was a kid. 😅 My family's Low German usually rolls the R, but I could never do it as a kid, which drove me crazy in Spanish class in high school (I knew "pero" and "perro" were different but I couldn't pronounce the difference properly). And then I started learning Finnish and had the same problem, because they roll every R (Finnish is like Italian in the sense that it is extremely phonetic, and what you read is what you say, including the double vowels and consonants). But then one day when I was driving, I tried saying a Finnish tongue twister for the thousandth time, and something clicked, because I could suddenly do it. I still have a bit of a problem with it in some words, but I can definitely pronounce it a LOT better than I used to be able to. The High German/ French R, on the other hand... Yeah, that one still eludes me.😅
How could you call someone "good" when he's a supposed linguist that says something like "light and heavy sounds" or compares the "richness" of language? Or "everything has a gender" when not everything does? Olly is horrible, extremely unscientific. It's like calling a tabloid a peer reviewed journal.
Link to the original video
ruclips.net/video/Pvsz7z2F6JI/видео.html
You have an editing error in your video. The segment with your wife appears twice in the video.
20:32 In Portugal "Problema" is also masculine, we say it "o problema", "o/il".
German here, married to an Italian whom I met at high school. I taught myself Italian in secret during summer holidays so I could surprise her. (That was 43 years ago, we have three adult kids and a grandson now.) I had of course a lot of motivation, but I also thought it was really a thankful language to learn. Full disclosure: I was best in class in English and French already when I started, because I had discovered already how to teach myself languages.
But I have tried other languages as well afterwards, and I think Spanish is more difficult than Italian, not to mention Slavic or even other languages of the Germanic family, which should yet be easy for a German like me.
The phonetics are easy and the spelling represents it very truly, once you learn the difference between g/c and gh/ch. Compare this to the clusterfuck of English spelling and pronunciation, or even French or Scandinavian languages.
The grammar is straightforward if you have mastered another Romance language already, and if you are used to German grammar. (English people complaining about grammar in other languages are like pedestrians complaining about the difficulty of driving. Go to driving school and get a license, is the answer.)
Speaking Italian like a native of course is difficult. First of all, what native? When I had learned Italian, my in-laws just switched to Sardinian when they didn’t want me to understand. An uncle of mine who was a policeman once wanted me to listen in on conversations between gang members in an Italian restaurant. I had to tell him that I wouldn’t understand a word, since they would probably speak in a southern Italian lingo and use a jargon on top of that. And lastly, when I later spoke with Italian colleagues working at the Milan subsidiary of the corporation I worked at, they would tell me I spoke with a Sardinian accent, but after talking an evening with them, I would phone my wife and she would tell me that I had picked up a Milanese accent from them!
The Italian language is like Swahili in the number of vowels and consonants symmetry.
Here is the translation to English:
Brazilian Portuguese has had orthographic reforms that make it increasingly resemble Italian, but with nasal sounds like French.
Examples:
Optic: ótico (BR); ottico (IT)
Bread: pão (BR); pain (FR)
In standardized dutch, all words have gender or are neutral, but it is in no way expressed in the language. However, in many fluently spoken Flemish dialects the male article changes subtly. So we do have a sense of gender without really realizing
The same is the case in eastern Dutch dialects (Twents, Sallands, Achterhoeks). So we have also three genders.
I love listening to people speak Italian. It is a beautiful language.
Great Review 👍🏼
3:55 incredibile is spelled incorrectly
very interesting with 'il problema', its the same in spanish where 'el problema' going by the rules should be feminine but my understanding is that words ending with 'ma' are from greek neutral and sounded masculine so they get the masculine article
Is it possible that the article for "il problema" is due to the same principle for compound words we have in Italian such as "La pallavolo"? What I'm trying to say is that the latter example takes the article from the first word in the compound word "palla", hence feminine although the word itself ends in "o", while the former might take the article from "pro" even though it ends with the vowel "a".
23:02
Thats the same with german and its articles der, die, das. After some time you will just hear if something sounds right or wrong.
I liked hearing your wife’s pov!
Adoro il burrata.
La burrata!😉
Love the videos metatron.
Have you seen the videos of how Ollie learnt Italian? Take a look, it's really interesting.
Hi Metratron. Love your videos. I just saw a video that highlights Maltese to sicilian/Italian and arabic. The first half mostly compares Maltese to Arabic. The later part is mostly arabized sicilian/Italian Maltese words. It would be interesting to get your take on it. The video is by Langfocused and is titled Can Arabic Speakers Understand Maltese.
ruclips.net/video/s1DyDRn4_Fw/видео.html
Does the gender "mismatch" between article and end of word in Italian ever happen due to the word's origin? i'm just thinking in comparison to the Spanish example "el drama," where it's masculine because the word comes from Greek rather than Latin.
20:23 - this is bullshit, and the paper that came up with that conclusion is severely flawed and has been called out.
Which paper are you talking about?
@@noamto He knows which paper. I read too many papers, can't keep track. It's a famous one in this subject. Ask Chatgpt.
I decided to learn Italian later in life. I had heard it's easy (second only to english in European languages) but that's an exaggeration. I am a greek speaker so phonetically and grammatically it is not that difficult (but again not "grammarless" like english). But it does have tricky parts like the congiuntivo, ci, ne and a lot of idiomatic expressions. In any case a beautiful language. PS Also why don't you guys go back to the old forma di cortesia (second plural). It makes much more sense than Lei and would make the imperative simpler.
The rolled R has been a bane of mine since I was a kid. 😅 My family's Low German usually rolls the R, but I could never do it as a kid, which drove me crazy in Spanish class in high school (I knew "pero" and "perro" were different but I couldn't pronounce the difference properly). And then I started learning Finnish and had the same problem, because they roll every R (Finnish is like Italian in the sense that it is extremely phonetic, and what you read is what you say, including the double vowels and consonants). But then one day when I was driving, I tried saying a Finnish tongue twister for the thousandth time, and something clicked, because I could suddenly do it. I still have a bit of a problem with it in some words, but I can definitely pronounce it a LOT better than I used to be able to.
The High German/ French R, on the other hand... Yeah, that one still eludes me.😅
i hat t o learn the g and c pronunciation in second grade beenig German in Italy
How could you call someone "good" when he's a supposed linguist that says something like "light and heavy sounds" or compares the "richness" of language? Or "everything has a gender" when not everything does?
Olly is horrible, extremely unscientific.
It's like calling a tabloid a peer reviewed journal.
il problema era neutro