You missed the boat if you didn't learn Spanish if you're trying to learn Italian

You missed the boat if you didn't learn Spanish if you're trying to learn Italian
 

As you know or may not know I just came back from Italy. When I first got to Vicenza, Italy I stayed with an American couple who are in the military in Vicenza. They have been in Italy for over two years with one more year to go. Neither one of them speaks Italian. They live in an all Italian neighborhood. Nobody speaks Englsih. I know the neighbors are friendly because I spoke to them. They have Italian TV and radio. The wife claims she doesn't really want to learn Italian
and the husband says he wants to learn and has been trying to learn but just can't seem to learn Italian. They both
mentioned that the Spanish speakers learn Italian while the English speakers are left to flounder. LOL!

(It's comical that the wife claims she knows more Italian than the husband who is trying to learn Italian while the wife isn't.
She actually makes fun of him. Says she can order food in a ristorante while he can't. etc. etc.)

As if all this wasn't bad enough they would at times be very nagative about Italian culture etc. etc. Needless to say I couldn't get away from them fast enough. That negativity can rub off on you. Don't hang around Americans in Italy. Go total immersion. I did.

In my case I lived in Italy for two years, learned Italian and then came back to California and learned Spanish eventually getting my master's
degree in Spanish. All because of my Italian background. It would not have happened if I didn't know Italian. My knowledge
of Italian made it easy to learn Spanish plus my Italian background gave me the motivation to learn Spanish since there were
no Italian speakers around. When I would speak to Spanish speakers I felt like I was back home in Italy. After many many years
of not speaking Italian I started to study Italian 4 years ago. Because I had the Spanish it was easy to go back to Italian.

Over the years I have met many Italians nationals(not Italian Americans) here in California who learned Spanish. Infatti I have
yet to meet one native Italian speaker here in California that did not learn Spanish. They usually learn Spanish first and then English.

At the Bed and Breakfast place I stayed at in Vicenza the owner who only speaks Italian says he has no trouble understanding
a Mexican friend who stays with him every year. The Mexican friend speaks Spanish to him and he answers in Italian. He has
clients from Spain and says the samething about them. Also one time while I was speaking on the owners phone I spoke in Spanish
thinking he wouldn't understand. After I got off the phone he said he had understood every single thing I said. We laughed and laughed about that.

So if you're an English speaker trying to learn Italian and had the chance to learn Spanish and didn't you really missed the boat.
Or if you have a chance to learn Spanish and aren't learning it you're missing the boat. Not talking about just taking Spanish in
school. I'm talking about getting out and speaking Spanish with Spanish speakers. Also watch Spanish television and listen to Spanish
radio. Here in California we have the oportunity to do this. In many places in the U.S. you have the opportunity to learn Spanish.

English is not a Latin language but even still English vocabulary is about 50 to 60% Latin. So now just imagine Spanish which is a Latin language.

Phonologically, Spanish and Italian are very similar, so that a Spanish speaking person could effortlessly pronounce Italian, while
you cannot say the same for French for example. Italian and Spanish are closer to each other than say Italian and French yet Italian
is closer to French than Spanish is a proposito.

VEry nice story, I love it. How do you translate into spanish the following :
That negativity can rub off on you

When learning Spanish, I thought knowing some Latin would be useful. Unfortunately, classical Latin vocabulary is not much use, because a lot of Spanish vocabulary is from Vulgar Latin. For example you might think that the Spanish for farm would come from Latin ager. But no, granja from Medieval Latin granica, or finca from Vulgar Latin, and so on.

When I don't learn easily the words in English, I feel that was working during that time in background already that I didn't endeavor the sufficient for arrive to my goal.

Nice story is and well it made me to think about my endeavor daily in this life.

But you can find words as "agrario" or "agricultura" :)

I find this is a sad story. It's a pity they don't want to learn Italian. And what's wrong with Italian culture? Creo que no entienden nada :eek:

Only 9% of native English speaking Americans can speak any king of forgein language other than English.:eek: That includes all the languages there are in the world from Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, French and so on. Americans just have a rotten attitude when it comes to learning other languages and dealing with other cultures.:( Es la pura verdad que nadie puede negar. Lo siento mucho pero asi es.

Europeans on the other hand speak other languages more. For example in Italy 40% of the people can speak another language and that's consider low for a European countries. Switzerland has 4 official languages. 53% of people in Spain
speak another language.

For most of Europe, I agree. I have no figures, but I think the English are as bad as the Americans.

Estoy totalmente de acuerdo.:worried: Pienso que es porque Gran Britaña es una isla. También los ingleses hablan inglés, la idioma la mas hablada en el mundo.:hmm: Yo hablo un poco de muchas lenguas ¡pero no soy típico!:D

@brute: El inglés no es el idioma más hablado del mundo. El chino mandarín ocupa el primer lugar, seguido del español y del inglés. Otras fuentes dicen que el Hindi precede al español.

interesting story :thumbsup:

La negatividad se pega.
o
La negativididad es contagiosa.

Can you say :thinking:: No quiero estar pringado por su negatividad

I read where there are more actual native speakers of Spanish than there are native speakers of English. Sin embargo hay mas gente en el mundo que estudian y hablan inglés como secundo idioma.

Cierto ,eres correcto. Pero, he leido que hay mas personas en China que en EEUU que inglés hablan. Por desgracia, actualmente inglés es el idioma que domina el mundo de comercio y del ordinador.

I'm agree with you Brute, the majory of people worldwide speaks English, although there different idioms in the each country, for instance people native from England have different words than EEUU, furthermore I think that it's more for different kinds to English, but yes there are more people who speaks English than another language as second language.

Spanish is second entonces. At least in the U.S. When you're in second place you try harder también.

I've learned some Italian (before Spanish) and would love to return to it one day and learn it to a high level. I can see lots of similarities between the two languages; my basic knowledge of Italian helped with Spanish, and my knowledge of Spanish now means that I can understand more Italian now than I could when I stopped learning Italian.

I would think that Americans would be a little more eager to learn when in another country. After all we hear "Why don't the try to speak English? Why are we printing signs in Spanish? If we went to their country we would try to speak their language and they wouldn't print the signs in English." all the time. I got angry once at a Mexican restaurant. We went there for lunch. My coworker was ordering his food and giving all kinds of instructions to the girl and she wasn't understanding what he was saying. He started getting mad at her and I got angry at him. His attitude is "They come over here and take our jobs and they should at least learn English..." Well you could tell she was clearly trying to learn English. But... This guy is an idiot anyway. If I had known more Spanish I could have ordered for him. (Trying not to get too political but I don't think people should be allowed to illegally come to our country, but in a legal way I'm all for it. I know enough 2nd generation Mexican immigrants to know that it's rude to point them out because they can speak in a tongue other than English and have slightly darker skin. Also it's not my job to find illegals. I can't imagine how my friend Elsa must live if she is constantly asked if she's a citizen. I do imagine that my co worker would be angry if he was asked the same...)

Anyway I wanted to learn a second language. While researching Spanish was the one that I felt I could get the most use of. As I'm learning more and more about the language and about the people and countries that speak it I find more and more reason to keep studying it. Did you know that the largest non white ethnic group in the USA are of Spanish speaking decent? Or that the country that has the second largest Spanish speaking population is the USA? Yep, I think it will come in handy. :) Could have already been very handy if I would have gotten off my kester and learned it sooner.

Hello Chris.

I liked to much your commentary.
But I have some doubts about some words you have wrote in your last post.

For example you have wrote Coworker, I have understood that word could means Copiloto.

A person to side from you.

I don't know if I am well or at least I have the minimum knowledge about that word, but I like to learn that word.

Am I right?

Hola, Crotalito,
co-worker (AmE) (work mate) colega, compañero/-ra de trabajo;
(collaborator) colaborador, colaboradora

@Chris. Well, "nunca es tarde si la dicha es buena" (ie., it is never too late!) :)

Now that I'am an italian citizen I think it will be a good idea to learn italian :rolleyes:
Villa, do you know a good website to do so?