My Italian teacher made a very interesting comment during our class today about the difficulties that English students have with learning a European language: new languages require us to think a lot more about what we're actually saying!
I have now come to the conclusion that English remains one of the world's most widely spoken languages simply because of the fact that it is just so lazy! The infinitive of a verb (sorry to get technical) never changes like it must do in Italian and French (as well as many other languages, I'm sure). I speak, you speak, we speak. Oh, it must be so hard to remember to add an 's' on the end when constructing the sentence he speaks!
Another factor- the English language requires the speaker to not have to even THINK about gender articles- everything is preceded by 'the'! Today I was forced into memorising the endless gender articles used in the Italian language: la penna (a pen), un elefante etc., which, when changed into the plural form become le penne and gli elefanti! And that's just the basics! Plus, I've probably got that wrong too. 'Gli' is a particularly hard sound to remember because we don't use it in the English language. The closest sound I can think of is 'yee'.
So, after three lessons and four and a half hours of Italian, my head is spinning and my tongue is tied beyond repair. English really is a walk in the park!
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