In Italian, the word for ‘cat’ is ‘gatto’, whereas in Latin, or rather, ancient Italian, the word for ‘cat’ was ‘cattus’. This means that the English language word for ‘cat’ is closer to Latin than the modern Italian word ‘gatto’.
Curious what you come across whilst researching the differences between civil and common law legal principles, isn’t it?
Minghin says
I’m Italian and I would make a question to english native speakers, notably US people: why many of you, on visiting Italy, try to speak to italian people using spanish word? It is very bizzare, very odd at least to me. Somedays I want to go to newyork and try to speak to NY people in German language I think it is the same thing, isn’t it? 🙂
Alex Roe says
I’m not American, but I think I can explain why Americans use Spanish in Italy. Spanish is almost a second language in some parts of the States – especially in southern states close to Spanish speaking Mexico.
And Americans know that Italian is not English – it’s another language, and it does resemble Spanish – so Americans will try to use Spanish and see what happens, I imagine. Down in Naples where the dialect is close to Spanish, the locals may understand Spanish speaking Americans quite easily.
An odd “side effect” of learning Italian is that you can just about understand Spanish. I have been told this and discovered it was true when some Spaniards asked me for directions once here in Milan. I found I could more or less understand them and they understood me too.
So, you see, it’s not quite the same as someone going to NYC and trying to communicate in German. You would be fine in Bolzano in German though, as I’m sure you know.
And, there are quite a number of Italian speakers in NYC – so you may well be able to get by without knowing English (or German).
Ciao, ciao,
Alex
Irene of An Anerican in Padua says
Yes, the Italians are so curious about the sometimes “different” use of Latin-based words. When I am discussing our language with them, words like “sympathetic” versus “simpatico” come up in conversation as not only false friends, but interesting looks into root words. “Sympathetic” should be translated into Italian as more like “comprensivo” while “simpatico” should become the English word “nice”, most of the time. Which one is closer to the Latin original or is Greek the only origin of these words?
Alex says
Hi Irene,
“Which one is closer to the Latin original or is Greek the only origin of these words?” – I’ll have a hunt round, and see.
Not sure how the meaning of these words evolved so far from their original meanings.
Another curiosity is ‘to furnish’ which sometimes resembles the Italian ‘fornire’ – but not generally….!
Best,
Alex
Alex Roe says
Hi Jeff,
From what I have understood, knowing Spanish will help you learn Italian, even if it may lead to some confusing. The languages have similar origins, but are not as similar as you might think.
While many Italians can understand quite a lot of spoken Spanish, they can find actually learning the language quite difficult, although I do know a number of Italians who speak Spanish.
As for Portuguese, well, I understand that it is not all that easy, and can be tricky to learn.
However, as Joe pointed out above, once you know two or three languages, adding others becomes easier, if only because your brain becomes more able to manage different languages. Think of your brain as being a hard disk, and the languages as being operating systems stored on separate partitions, if you like.
Certainly, and I well know, learning languages is an interesting process. As to how we manage it, well, I don’t really know. Exposure and large doses of motivation help though.
Thanks to you and to Joe for commenting,
Best,
Alex
Jeff says
I have not yet tried to study Italian, but I have a strong knowledge of Spanish, and I just began some Portuguese studies. While a lot of the vocabulary is similar, the pronunciation and intonation differences between Spanish and Portuguese is significant enough to make learning Portuguese as a third language quite difficult. Nonetheless, I am confident that I will overcome these obstacles and begin studying Italian some time soon!
Joe T says
Alex – when you consider that the French is “chat”, and the English word comes from the French word, which in turn is a corruption of the Latin word, then it’s not all that surprising.
English is not directly descended from Latin the way French and Italian are, but English has the distinction of having 60% of its vocabulary based on Latin, mostly through French.
So all these similarities are not that surprising. Nevertheless, they are interesting.
Not that any of this has helped me speak Italian better, I might add.
I actually find that my knowledge of French (learned in elementary school) and Spanish (learned in high school and college), hinders my attempts to improve my conversational Italian.
By contrast, my cousin, a native Italian speaker, now speaks Spanish fluently, having spent a only few months living in Spain.
So my guess is that if one is an adult and already speaks a Romance language (or two) as a second language, learning yet another one can be difficult, precisely because of the similarities between the languages.
Whereas if one is an adult native speaker of one of these languages, then adding a second or a third is much easier.