Italian

Italian is spoken by 64 million people in some 29 countries. It plays a significant role in international relations as an official language of the European Union.

Italian is the national, or de facto national, language of Italy, San Marino, Vatican City, Switzerland and some areas of Slovenia and Croatia. It is widely spoken in Malta, Corsica, Albania, Luxemburg, Germany and Belgium.

Why study Italian?

• Italy is today one of the top economies in the world. Italian is the fourth-most frequently requested language by employers.
• Over 7,000 American firms do business with Italy and more than 1,000 U.S. companies have offices in Italy.
• Italy is a world leader in the culinary arts, interior design, fashion, graphic design, furniture design, machine tool manufacturing, robotics, electromechanical machinery, shipbuilding, space engineering, construction machinery and transportation equipment.
• According to UNESCO, over 60% of the world’s art treasures are found in Italy. Some of the most famous Western artists, from Giotto to Michelangelo, were Italian. Knowledge of Italian is vital in understanding the contexts of their art.
• Italian literature boasts some of the world’s most famous writers and thinkers, from Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch and Machiavelli, to Verga, Svevo, Pirandello and Gramsci, to name a few.
• Italy is one of the world’s culinary leaders of the world and the increasing popularity of the language reflects a growing obsession with Italian food.
• Do you want to work in fashion? Prada, Gucci, Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino, Versace, Bulgari, Fendi, Ferragamo and others dominate the field. Many stylists of foreign houses like Dior, Chanel, Louis Vuitton are Italian.

Improve your understanding of English!

Italian ranks as the fourth-most studied language in U.S. colleges and high schools.

Italian vocabulary will help you decipher the meaning of unknown words in English. Italian is key to the preservation of Latin, from which 60% of the English lexis is derived.

• Do you want to understand the techniques of the art? A little bit of chiaroscuro will make that portico brighter than ever.
• Do you want to focus on the language of music like forte, maestro, bravo and Figaro?
• Italian is the language with the highest number of words for naming food, restaurants, dishes and produce!