Why learn Italian? Well, when I started studying Italian 13 years ago, I must admit I wasn’t sure why exactly I was doing that. I just felt there was something for me there. It wasn’t long before I found out there was actually a lot for me there.
I could never get enough of the amazing food, the dreamy landscapes, the cinematic masterpieces,… Six years later, that seemingly pointless decision landed me my first full-time job.
So if you ask me what the benefits of learning Italian are, I won’t stop listing them until I’ve talked you into studying it as well…
Honestly, you don’t even have to ask! Here are some of the best reasons to learn Italian right now.
What are the benefits of learning Italian?
1. Italian culture is just delightful.
Be it crazy TV shows or the larger-than-life movies of Fellini and Pasolini, Italian culture has something for every taste. When I approached the language for the first time, I was pretty obsessed with all the Art with a capital A Italy had produced throughout history.
But I eventually surrendered to Italian pop culture and memes, which is decadent as much as it is fun. I mean, why pick between opera and Italian pop or between literary classics and celeb Twitter feuds when you can have it all? After you learn Italian, this whole microcosm will be a single click away!
2. You may find a new job — or a new career!
Is Italian a useful language, objectively speaking? You bet!
If you ever do business with Italians, you’ll soon realize how speaking their language will open many doors. And since it’s not as popular as a second language as, say, Spanish or French, it can be a true asset on your resume.
Bear in mind Italy has the 8th-biggest economy on Earth, which goes hand in hand with an extremely dynamic job market. Can you picture yourself leaving everything behind to work at a winery, an art museum, or an authentic restaurant in Italy?
3. Italian is quite easy to learn compared to other languages.
It’s not me saying that just because Portuguese is my native language. In fact, the American Foreign Service Institute estimates an English speaker can become fluent in Italian after 575 to 600 hours of study time.
That’s about the same as most Romance languages. German, in turn, should take approximately 750 hours’ worth of lessons. The majority of Asian and Eastern European languages require between 900 and 1,100 hours of dedication. Then you have Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese with an astonishing 2,200 hours.
Granted, rolling your R’s and knowing your way around all the verb tenses can be a bit tricky in the beginning. Yet that has nothing on the thousands of ideograms of Chinese or the three writing systems used in Japan!
4. You’ll make new friends.
I’m not necessarily talking about the Italian friends you’ll meet once you land in Italy with your golden Italian speaker badge contrasting with your shirt.
Though that will eventually happen, before you get to that point you can meet tons of fellow students of Italian if you’re down.
Even if you’re teaching yourself Italian and don’t have classmates or a tutor to interact with, you can (and should!) join a language exchange community like HelloTalk.
Besides helping you practice and sharing tips with you, your new friends will introduce you to their culture and maybe their language as well! That’s my definition of a win-win.
5. (And you might meet your soulmate in Italy!)
Apart from being fashionable and typically attractive, Italians are known to be passionate and adventurous too.
What’s more, it’s not the prude and pious nation it once was, so you can almost touch the romance anywhere you visit in the country.
To make a long story short: if you want to use Italian as a secret weapon to win locals over and find love, then absolutely go for it! After all, hardly anything sounds sweeter than a ti amo.
And in case you’ve already met your sweetheart, you can always guide them through Italy’s romance capitals — there’s a handful of them! Venice, Rome, Florence, Verona, and Capri are all perfect settings for an idyllic getaway together.
6. Interacting with locals on your next trip will come naturally.
About a third of Italians speak English (which is underwhelming in the European context). That leaves around 40 million out of your circle of potential Italian friends if you don’t speak their language.
Regardless, few things in the language learning world feel more rewarding than a successful conversation with a native speaker, particularly on their home turf.
Plus, I’m not talking about generic locals, but some of the liveliest, wittiest — and most opinionated! — folks on the planet: Italians.
Now picture yourself randomly meeting exciting people on a Sicilian beach or in a Roman gelato shop, and I’ll rest my case.
7. Your hand gesture game will impress everyone.
Southern Europeans in general are more expressive with their hands than their northerly counterparts, yet in Italy gestures have been turned into a language in their own right.
The intricate code was probably born of necessity, as Italy remained politically and linguistically fragmented for 1,400 years following the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
Today, there are gestures for expressing admiration, hunger, fear, anger, and countless other feelings, sensations, and opinions. You can even make up entire sentences using basically hand gestures. But don’t use that as an excuse to skip your Italian lessons!
8. You’ll be proud of yourself.
Mastering a foreign language is always challenging to accomplish — which is unsurprisingly one of the most compelling things about it.
You’ll celebrate your first breakthroughs as you successfully answer a question or conjugate an irregular verb.
Then you’ll feel great when you understand the best part of the dialogues while you watch a movie with Italian subtitles.
Overall, learning Italian can work wonders for your self-confidence, as it’s a fantastic way to prove to yourself you can do anything you set your mind to.
9. Your brain will thank you.
I bet you didn’t imagine there’d be a sciencey answer to the question “why should I learn Italian?”. Here, though, you’ll be amazed to find out the benefits of learning Italian abound.
First off, Italian will activate both your long- and short-term memory and help keep dementia and similar diseases at bay. It’ll also improve your ability to focus and to switch between tasks.
Finally, it will have you make more sensible decisions and, most astonishingly, make your brain’s grey matter denser. In layman’s terms, that means Italian will actually make you smarter.
10. Learning other languages will be far easier afterward.
This is especially true with other Romance languages (e.g. French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian), which share the same basic structure and often have a ton of similar words.
That said, even if you choose to study a totally unrelated language when you’re happy with your level of Italian, you’ll benefit enormously. That’s because your brain will have created a sort of mechanism it will dust off whenever you venture into language learning again.
In case Italian already is the second foreign language you’re learning, don’t get too cocky if it comes naturally to you!
11. It’ll broaden your horizons.
Have you ever watched Arrival with Amy Adams? To me, that’s a stunning depiction of how language shapes our way of thinking and being. If, for instance, you’d been raised speaking Russian instead of English, you’d certainly be an entirely different person.
When you learn another language, it’s almost like you’re creating a second personality within your own. You’ll learn to enjoy different foods, discover new cultural references, and maybe even change your political alignment.
Let yourself grow as a person as you learn Italian (or any other language for that matter) and you’ll see what good that will do to you. Speaking of which…
12. You’ll become a better person…
I know this is controversial; after all, knowing someone or something well doesn’t necessarily lead us to love them. Yet to be able to empathize with somebody else, we must understand where exactly we relate to them.
That’s one of the advantages of learning Italian: you’ll get to understand folks better. When we’re comfortable in our bubble, it’s easier to fall prey to an “us versus them” mentality, which is sadly widespread these days.
Learning Italian will show you once again (in case you’ve forgotten) how vast the world is and how little is really under your control.
It’ll remind you that being petty or narrow-minded won’t get you anywhere because virtually everything you’re absolutely sure about is merely a product of your own environment!
13. … And probably a better cook as well!
Italians pompously claim to have the best cuisine on Earth. While every other nation would beg to differ, I do reckon so many foreigners have Italian food as their personal favorite (including me).
Delicious as they certainly are, the majority of Italian recipes are actually quite simple thanks to their origin in the countryside several centuries ago. The fact that fresh and seasonal ingredients consistently have the upper hand is an awesome thing too.
Easy, healthy and finger-licking is what any food wishes it could claim to be, though only a few can check all those boxes. But since that seems to be a specialty of Italian cuisine, faster than you think you’ll be waltzing through lasagne and carbonara and perhaps even pizza and cannoli.
14. You’ll have a deeper understanding of western history and culture.
With roughly 60 UNESCO World Heritage Sites under its belt, Italy is an open-air museum like no other country on the planet. No wonder: it was the seat of the most influential empire in western history, then went on to serve as the capital of the Catholic Church to our very days.
Italy was the birthplace of groundbreaking art movements as well, most famously the Renaissance, which arguably changed the way we interact with reality even. Now, Italian fashion sets trends across the globe.
Because culture and language are deeply connected, you’ll hardly be able to scratch beneath the surface of all that impressive heritage without mastering the language used to create it. Remember when I told you learning Italian will broaden your horizons? It’s also about the culture, believe me!
15. You’ll never get sick of it!
This is yet another of my personal reasons to learn Italian, so you’ll have to trust me here. Not that many people are fluent in the language outside of Italy (and Switzerland), which means entering the Italian-speaking bubble will feel almost like gaining access to a private paradise you’ll never have to leave.
Each time you walk back into that secret universe you’ll come across undiscovered (or unnoticed) treasures. And the coolest thing about it is that whenever you travel to Italy that whole world will materialize before your eyes, filled with the sensations that will eventually feel deliciously familiar.
Conclusion
My list of benefits of learning Italian could go on forever, but I’m pretty sure you’re already sold by now. What’s not to love about one of the sexiest languages on Earth?
I really hope you can fall in love with Italian as madly as I did. While I’ve always enjoyed learning new languages, as soon as I laid my eyes on Italian I knew no other language would ever win me over like that!
At this point, the wisest thing to do is surround yourself with the best tools you can retrieve online, like books, podcasts, and apps to learn Italian.
Great post