Why Italy

Would you consider Italian a difficult language to learn?

I'm currently learning Spanish and Portuguese and would like to learn Italian as well. The thing about it though is that I probably won't be able to take classes to learn the language (I'm already a doulbe major doing International Business and Spanish and plan to pick up a minor in either Mandrin or Japanese). So for this reason I am thinking about just learning the language on my own. I'm doing this with Portugues right now and have been pretty successful. But I'm not sure if that's simply because I'm learning Spanish in school and Portuguese is very similar to it. Is Italian similar enough to Portuguese and Spanish where I'd be able to learn it on my own? Thanks in advance!

Public Comments

1. Yes
2. Italian grammar is very similar to both Spanish and Portuguese grammars. The pronunciation is very similar to Spanish, not so much to Portuguese, but if you know those languages it's going to be easy for you to learn. .
3. Italian is the easiest of all the romantic languages to learn,(Portuguese,Spanish,french and Italian) it is a very logical and well thought out language, unlike say, English, which is a very difficult one to learn...Portuguese would be the most difficult of the romantic's to learn....good luck and stick with it!!!!!
4. Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and French are related because they are Romance Languages (strong relationship with Latin here). Others like Dutch, German, English are Germanic Languages. You don't mention what your mother tongue is. If it is a Romance one, it will be pretty easy for you and you will find lots of analogies. If you are a native English speaker, I think you will probably be OK with it because of the Spanish and Portuguese you are taking. Moreover, if you took Latin in High School that will be a bonus! So why don't you give it a try? The important thing is that you don't give up, make connections across the grammar, and enjoy it! Buena Suerte con tus proyectos :)
5. I was surprised to discover that Italian is *not* so easy to learn, even though I am familiar with Spanish, French, German, Russian and English. It likes to tie itself into picky little grammatical knots that take a lot more work than all those others except perhaps for Russian, which is in a league all its own. I was also surprised to hear someone who calls herself a linguist telling you it wasn't so difficult. All I can say is, beware.
6. Absolutely not. I speak it and I am Romanian. It would be a breeze for you since you speak Spanish and Portuguese. Italian is a lot simpler than Portuguese because it has no nasal sounds - Port has 10 I believe. Go for it! You'll love the language. It just rolls off your tongue. I studied French, Italian, Spanish, German, Polish, Arabic, Russian, Romanian (mother tongue), and Chinese during the course of my life. I do not speak all of them, but I can certainly tell you what's easy and what's not.
7. As an Italian minor, I believe that it isn't that difficult to learn. After all, some things in Spanish and Italian are similar sounding and sometimes mean the same thing. I picked up Italian my freshman year of high school with no problem being that I am a non native. I haven't had a problem since. In my opinio, go for it. There's no harm in trying. Good Luck learning Italian.