Italian has to be the most beautiful language
in the world - at least some dialacts. Lots of people are
in agreement about that, so it's not just my personal opinion. It's
about as easy (or difficult, if you see it that way) as Spanish.
The languages are closely related. Just like Spanish, Italian comes
from Latin, which was spoken in Ancient Rom. Italy was the homeland
of the romans.
Since I'm interested in history and subjects related
to it, it's especially nice to know Italian. In Italy many books
are written about history, archaeology, art history and so on.
Italian is spoken mainly in Italy and in parts
of Switzerland. I also happen to know that the people of Malta speak
Italian, along with their native language Maltese and their 'adopted'
language English. Also, there are people who have emigrated from
Italy and who still speak their old language. They might be found
anywhere in the world, but I think mostly in the US, Canada and
Australia. In all, about 60 million people speak Italian, most of
them in Europe.
And even if it's got nothing to do with the language,
I love Italian food. The various pastas and pizzas have such incredibly
appetizing names. Don't words like fettucine, lasagna, cannelloni
och tagliatelli seem to taste just as well as the pasta by those
names?
Latin and Interlingua
I've also studied Latin, but it's really difficult.
It's a language that is at the same time unsophisticated and hard
to learn. The grammar is tough. Though I have heard that ancient
Greek and Russian are both more difficult. A bit of Latin is good
to know, if you want to study other modern languages. (Well, maybe
not Chinese or Japanese, but many different European languages).
There's a modern version of Latin - Interlingua.
It's a language that has been created. Basically, it's simplified
but more expressive than Latin. Mainly, it's based on Spanish and
Italian (with a bit of French, English and a number of other languages).
The best thing about this language, is that you don't need to learn
it to understand it. If you've studied Spanish or Italian you'll
have no trouble understanding Interlingua. Of course, it's more
difficult to learn to write and speak, but then the same goes for
every other language.
Since Interlingua has been created without any
complicated grammar, it should be easier to learn than other languages.
I haven't studied it myself, but I can assure you that it's very
easy to understand text written in Interlingua.
You sometimes hear proposals about turning Latin
into the EU's official language. Whoever is suggesting that, can't
possibly have tried to study Latin himself - or it's some professor
of Latin who's forgotten how difficult the language really is. However,
now that there's Interlingua (and a few similar languages), we could
use that instead. Since it's so easy to understand, most people
would be able to read all the documents and articles written in
it, without any further studies. Only the people who write those
documents (or translate them) would have to learn Interlingua. Even
if you did have to learn it, it doesn't seem to be difficult.
I suspect that the reason proposals are made about
making Latin the offical language of the EU, is because it would
be awkward using a modern language that is still being used by one
or several countries. That might give that country (or countries)
an unfair advantage over the other member countries. Latin, on the
other hand, isn't officially spoken anywhere except for in the Vatican.
Even better, Interlingua is spoken nowhere and everywhere, depending
on wherever the students of the language live. It seems to me that
it couldn't get any fairer than that.
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