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Italian and English, two languages with long and rich histories,
and the other Germanic, their differences are deeper than those that at
not merely two parallel ways of saying the same things, but rather
different ways of thinking about them, two unique lenses through which
to its long history and varied influences. Its origins were in the 400s with
the dialects spoken by Anglo-Saxons who settled around this time on the
began with the Great Vowel Shift, a phenomenon that took place from
English changed from pure single sounds to diphthongs and other vowels
changed their value. Prior to the vowel shift, the word date was
similarly as boat is pronounced now, and house was pronounced like the
vowel in the modern whose. As a result of this, English became the only
blended Latin, Southern dialects and his native Tuscan dialect in his epic
poems which make up the Divine Comedy. These works were so widely
read and influential that they became what is generally regarded as the
many cognates such as hodie (Latin for today) and oggi, and homo (man)
and uomo.
Italian and English are clearly different in their sounds and spelling.
vowels are all pronounced in one specific way. Spelling is phonetic; there
are no silent letters and few exceptions to the rules. For example, c, g
and retains archaic silent letters. Its influence from Germanic and
Romance languages means that the same letters can make entirely
languages, all objects are either masculine or feminine, and the article as
well as any modifier must agree with the gender and number of their
subject. English nouns, apart from people and other living objects, do
not generally have genders, and any modifiers do not have to agree. For
example, the possessive in English, his and her, depends upon the
gender of the subject, while in Italian it depends upon the gender of the
these two languages. English verbs generally retain the same form—I
go, you go, we go, they go, etc.—and their meaning can be changed by
–ed or –ing. Italian, on the other hand, requires that verb endings be
changed to indicate subject and tense. For example, in the regular verb
parlare (to speak), parlo means I speak, parli means you speak, parla
means he or she speaks, and so on. This eliminates the need for subject
pronouns – it’s enough to say “l’ha fatto” (he did it) instead of “lui l’ha
singular indicative conjugation for avere (to have). Also, it means that as
long as all the elements of the sentence are present, their order can be
artistically arranged. Since direct objects and indirect objects are
This flexibility lends itself to poetry and songwriting. For example, in one
Renaissance poem by Giovanni Battista Guarini, one line says “un sol
become “a single you will be able languid and sorrowful alas to hear”,
recent and remote past, imperfect, future, conditional, and present and
past subjunctive, all have distinct patterns in Italian that identify the
subject, tense and mood with one word. Only the recent past requires an
auxiliary verb, which would be essere (to be) or avere (to have)
have gone, etc). One can form less common tenses like the pluperfect (I
had gone) and future perfect (I shall have gone) by combining the past
the subject of something else, such as “I think that you are nice” or “It’s
modality, but less often. The subjunctive form of to be for the first-
person singular takes the form of I be instead of I am, and I were instead
of I was. It can be seen in certain cases, like “Long live the king”, “be
However, the differences between Italian and English are not all so
yield incorrect results, because the way one thinks of and says things
may be very different. For example, the Italian word bello, which in
exchanges between family, friends and children, the Lei is used among
adults one does not know well personally. It is conjugated exactly like
subjunctive form. For plural second-person address, the usual form, voi,
frequently so in British English—the verb form remains the same and the
may say “you guys” or “you all”. Southern American English is well
known for its expression “y’all”, which may be used to address one or
more people.
The emphatic English “it is!” or “he does!” are expressed differently
the pronoun has only to be reiterated at the end of the sentence, where
its redundancy indicates emphasis (“I’ll do it” vs. “Lo farò io”).
tenses and knowing when to use them, while for someone learning
English, the sheer number of oddly spelled and pronounced words would
the new language. Beyond that which one can define in a dictionary,
Italian and English are deeply and richly different, from the intriguing
histories which shaped each tradition to the unique ways of speaking and