Here are some that I found surfing the web:
1. Why do you think Mozart composed most of his operas in Italian rather than in German?
2. According to UNESCO (the cultural and educational agency for the United Nations) the most of the world’s cultural heritage sites are in Italy.
3. Italy is one of the top economies in the world, and many employers are seeking people who speak both Italian and English. An estimated 7,500 American companies do business with Italy and more than 1,000 U.S. firms have offices in Italy, including Chrysler, IBM, General Electric, Motorola, Citibank. Many Italian firms have offices in the U.S.
4. If you like arts, music, design, architecture, opera, food, etc. this is the reference language. Knowing Italian is greatly beneficial in several career fields. 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
5. The Italian language is the closest to Latin, the common ancestor of all romance languages.
6. Italian developed from Latin and an estimated 60 percent of the English vocabulary also comes from Latin. Knowing Italian may help improve your scores in English.
7. No need of subtitles to see Fellini’s, Visconti’s and Pasolini’s movies!
8. A recent study showed that enrollment in Italian language classes at U.S. high schools and colleges is growing 15 to 20% faster than enrollment rates for Spanish, German and French.
9. Italian is recognized as one of the most beautiful spoken languages on the planet
10. Italian has the highest number of words for describing food!
🙂
Students, what are your reasons?
Princeton University – Italian
I cannot stand when people say “Italian is useless, it is only spoken in Italy.” To defend that, I tell them it’s official in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, and the Vatican, and a widely sought after second language in areas surrounding Italy, parts of Africa, Australia, Canada, USA, and South America. People don’t give it the credit it deserves! Italian is not useless.
Elisa, where can one find the “study” that is mentioned under #8 regarding increases in Italian enrollment in Highschools and Colleges?
In addition, Overseas International Programs have been proud to locate their campuses in Italy for more than 30-40 years now. Italy not only is the Cradle of Western Civilization (after Greece), but it’s central location and temperate climate makes it an ideal site for research and travel.
You can find it in “Osservatorio della lingua italiana, US Speaks Italian”, and in the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Foreign Language Student 2007, Post-Secondary Planning Survey Final Summary.
# 3 is the proof I found a phone interpreter job at 54, only because I am bilingual. I work mainly with Italian customers or Italians living in England, Canada and the USA…
Good stuff here! And I might add that the Italian language contains many interesting and colorful expletives not found in other, more boring, languages.
11 read the Divine Comedy in Italian!
You’re right, this is the best reason. There is no way to feel the perfection of “Amor ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende”, only learning italian you can realize what it really means.
Michele Gardini
I would add one more item: You can access to the Italian literature which is very rich and understand opera
First or seconds, matters little, what matters is the importance of history, of culture and Italian language in the world. Ours is a country very rich just as described in these points.
Nice list of reasons here.
However I believe that point 2 is an urban legend spread by Italians. According to the World Heritage List of UNESCO http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/ it includes 981 properties, out of which 49 in Italy (approx 5%). Or am I looking at the wrong numbers?
I think what they meant is Italy’s got the highest number of sites compared to other countries.
u r looking at the right numbers, but in a wrong way 😉
It is explained in the wrong way. The right form is that Italy is the country with the highest number of UNESCO sites. They’re 47, the second country is Spain with 43. The good thing is that Italy has other 40 sites waiting in the UNESCO Tentative List.
Simone, they re 49! 45 China and 44 Spain.
You’re right about the percentage! Thank you! But 49 sites out of 981 still put Italy at the top of the list as the country with the most UNESCO world’s heritage sites!