By Benedict Smythe

About 63 million people have Italian or Italiano as their native tongue. It is primarily spoken in Italy but other places that have Italian language spoken among other languages are Switzerland, Marino, and the Vatican City. Minorities speak Italian from nations like Croatia, France, Romania, and Slovenia.

Former colonies such as Ethiopia, Somalia, Libya and Eritrea also speak the language. Most important of all, immigrants who have gone to places like Venezuela, the US, Australia, Argentina, Germany, France, Uruguay and Canada also help in spreading the language.

What Makes the Italian Alphabet Unique

Most Romance languages have long given up the contrast on long and short consonants in Latin. But just like most Romance languages, Italian also has a distinct stress. Italian is considered to be the closest language that would resemble the dead languageLatin. Its lexical similarity to French is at 89%; 87% for Catalan; Sardinian is at 85%; Spanish is at 82%; 77% with the Romanian language and 52% with Maltese.

Referred to as il parlar gentile or the gentle language by its speakers, Italian continues to make use of the Latin alphabet on majority of its words. The standard Italian alphabet does not have the letters J, K, W, X and Y. But nowadays, X is quite common in some words, so do words that have the extra letter- J. J is often read as I in most Italian words and is evident on the names of places like Bojano (pronounced Bo-ya-no), Joppolo (Iopolo) or Jesi (Iesi).

J is now discouraged in modern Italian and is no longer a part of the contemporary Italian alphabet. The current alphabet now has 21 letters with each of these letters having an Italian equivalent such as in the case of gi for j; c or ch for k; s, ss, or cs for x; u or v for w; and i for y.

Accents are very important with the Italian language. It is evident on the acute accent that is being used on the letter E (for example: perch). The grave accent is used in words like (t for tea). This same accent is used on the letters A, I, O, and U to make the stress fall on the final vowel of a certain word (such as in giovent meaning youth).

H is often silent when used in most words like ho, hai, hanno, or ha; Z is read with a dz or ts sound (/dz/ or /ts/). Thus, the word Zanzara is read as dzandzara (meaning mosquito) and the word nazione is read as na-tssjone.

These are only a few unique rules of the Italian language.

Conversational Italian Words

1.

Smeans yes.

2.

Certomeans Of course.

3.

Ciao!means Hello.

4.

Arrivedercimeans Goodbye.

5.

Buon Giornomeans Good day.

6.

Buona Serameans Good evening.

7.

Come stameans How are you?

8.

Mi dispiacemeans Sorry.

9.

Di nuovomeans Again.

10.

Scusimeans Excuse me.

11.

Graziemeans Thank you.

12.

Buon appetitemeans Bon appetite.

Seven Days of the Week

MondayLunedi TuesdayMartedi WednesdayMercoledi ThursdayGiovedi FridayVenerdi SaturdaySabato SundayDomenica

Counting Up to Twenty

1.

Uno

2.

Due

3.

Tre

4.

Quattro

5.

Cinque

6.

Sei

7.

Sette

8.

Otto

9.

Nove

10.

Dieci

11.

Undici

12.

Dodici

13.

Tredici

14.

Quattrodici

15.

Quindici

16.

Sedici

17.

Diciassette

18.

Diciotto

19.

Diciannove

20.

Venti

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