Things I wish I’d understood about Italian when I began: #01

Buondì.

When you’re learning a new language, there are certain things that come up in lessons, or that teachers point out (or possibly forget to, as they are so obvious they can’t imagine you not knowing), which are easy for some learners to miss.

Tenses are a good example. Italian teachers know they’re really not so important for learners – when learning English themselves they’ll ask, but these tenses can’t all be used, surely?

But for an English native speaker, tenses are fundamental, so native English speaking students of Italian are left wondering, sometimes for years or decades, how to CORRECTLY say in Italian whatever English phrase they have in our heads but can’t translate.

Teachers are not good with big picture understanding of the differences between the language they’re teaching and yours because, well, they might not even know what the differences are.

In a multilingual class, if their students speak a variety of mother tongues, teachers can’t reasonably be expected to be able to point out helpful differences and similarities between Italian and English/Chinese/German/French etc.

And teachers of multi-lingual classes notice the Spanish, French and Portuguese native-speakers making rapid progress with Italian, so may assume that the confused-looking Americans and Brits are just, well, slow.

Teachers who teach monolingual classes (i.e. an Italian working at a college in the USA) may be using a text book or materials intended for multilingual groups (almost all of them are), so may not emphasise grammar areas that are fundamentally different in Italian and English.

Teachers’ lack of experience is a factor (everyone has to start some place), as might be a lack of imagination, or dare I say it – sheer laziness – last week we had a class of Brazilian Portuguese speakers and this lesson worked like a charm so, what the heck, let’s do the exact same thing with this group of British teenagers!

A good example of obvious stuff just falling through the gap, or at least, not being emphasised nearly enough for native-English speaking learners is (don’t switch off when I use a grammar term) subject pronouns.

Everyone’s heard Italians in the movies say things like “Iz very beautiful!” and, stereotype that it is, the missing ‘It’ is probably the most common error Italians make when speaking English because… (drum roll)

IN ITALIAN SUBJECT PRONOUNS ARE NOT NORMALLY NECESSARY

You knew that, I’m sure. And Italians learning English know equally well that in English subject pronouns such as ‘It’ ARE necessary, but that doesn’t stop them making the stereotypical mistake.

Bear with me. Italians say “E’ bellissima!” or E’ bellimssimo!’ without any equivalent of It, She, or He, but English native-speaking learners of Italian mostly don’t.

That’s because we’re so used to the obligatory subject pronoun (I, YOU, HE, SHE, IT, WE, YOU, THEY), that even if we get – in theory – that they’re not so necessary in Italian, we assume that using one anyway (given that they exist, so why not) will be just fine and dandy.

Guess what?

It isn’t.

Italians mostly just use subject pronouns to emphasise, so if you’re using them as a default in every sentence, as in English, you’re going to sound really weird.

For instance in this exchanage:

“Sei bello!” (not “Tu sei bello!”)
“Sei bella anche tu!”

“(You) are beautiful!”
“Are beautiful you too!”

Here’s another:

“Vai a prendere altre birre?”
“Vai tu!”

“Are you going to/Will you go get some more beers?”
“You go you!”

See how the emphasis is being done? That.

There’s lots to unpack here. Subject pronoun in English are huge in ‘reference’, for instance, and Italians are rubbish at reference in English, which leads to misunderstandings and inefficient communication. For instance:

“Sue speaks Italian well but John doesn’t, which is why (SELECT ONE: he/she/it) isn’t paying attention.”

The multiple choice subject pronouns in brackets REFER to one of the two people named previously. In Italian you’d use ‘lui’ or ‘lei’ and the basic idea would be the same.

But in my sentence it could be either one of them not paying attention – Sue because she doesn’t need to listen to the Italian teacher, or John because he can’t understand her. When Italians don’t bother with using a pronoun to refer, so just use the verb (prestare), the third person singular form (he/she/it) gives the listener no clue as to who’s being referred to. You’d need to assume it’s John not paying attention, but you might easily be wrong.

Use of reference makes the situation clear, and how we use reference depends a lot on our understanding of context. The he/she could refer back to something that was said in a previous sentence, for example, or something that hasn’t been said but that we can see (John scrolling his phone…)

Italians speaking English find reference hard because normally they don’t bother with subject pronouns. Vice versa, English native speakers speaking Italian bombard their listeners with pronouns, so confuse the heck out of them. Either way, communication is impeded and no one can quite put their fingers on why.

An even more important implication for native-English-speaking learners of Italian is that, by using subject pronouns (I, YOU, HE, SHE, IT, WE, YOU, THEY) too often, they have in their heads that they’ve already made clear to their listeners who is doing the verb (I love.. You love… He loves… etc.) but…

… in languages like Italian, where the verbs are CONJUGATED (Amo… Ami… Ama…) the listener is waiting for the ENDING of the verb, so pays little attention to the subject pronoun (which often isn’t there anyway), as they don’t even know what the verb is yet, so will wait to hear the subject conjugation at the end of it before putting the pieces together.

English train of thought = WHO? WHAT?
Italian train of thought = WHAT? WHO?

This difference in how the languages are structured is then compounded by an unfortunate feature of English pronunciation: an unstressed final syllable is pronounced with a ‘weak vowel’.

Think of the SOUND of the endings of ‘father’, ‘Pisa’, and ‘sailor’, for instance. The ‘er’, ‘-a’ and ‘-or’ sound basically the same to me.

We know that in English the ending of the verb matters little. Unless it’s an ‘-s’, an ‘-ing’, or an ‘-ed’, it’s not carrying much information, and certainly isn’t helping us find out who is doing the thing.

So in Italian, why pay much attention to the final syllable of ‘amare’ (amo, ami, ama,) when they sound so similar? Who cares? When we’re speaking, we already used a nice clear subject pronoun (io, lui, lei etc.) to get our message across, syllables back.

Now isn’t that all very obvious? Well yes, totally it is.

But don’t tell me you don’t have (or didn’t used to have) problems listening to normal-speed spoken Italian, because I won’t believe you.

So, if Italians are skipping all the subject pronouns that you’ve been schooled all your life to listen out for – as key markers of meaning – while you yourself are ignoring (even sub-consciously) those dinky little verb endings, because they all sound the same, and because you haven’t yet figured out that how fundamental they are to understanding who the AGENT is, well now you know one of the reasons why listening to normal-speed Italian is hard!

It’s not because Italians ‘speak too quickly’ or ‘eat their words’… Iz you!

You’re listening for the wrong things. Just as when you speak, and start your sentences with ‘Io’, you’re making life hard for Italians listening to you.

What should an Italian teacher do when faced with a bunch of native-English speaker learners?

Maybe teach the verbs first, before the subject pronouns? And the first person (I) conjugations first of all? So we can actually speak?

Sono stanco. Devo dormire. Ho un mal di testa. Finisco qui. Vi saluto. Vado!

And train their students, from the word ‘Go!’, to listen out for those ‘o’s.

A lunedì.

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