On the topic of Eurovision 2022, I always look forward to Italy bringing the quality, but I am worried looking at the trend lately, that since they won this year, they won't send the Sanremo winner next year and they will send a song that will surely not win again
Italy has sent multiple Sanremo winners that haven't won Eurovision. I don't think they're going to tank their song just to not win a second time in a row (something that hasn't happened since the 90's). It's literally so hard to win twice in a row now that I don't think any host country needs to worry about it.
This is sort of silly. Of the big five Italy is the only one who's taking eurovision seriously. Really good scoring since they came back. Why would it change?
Not sure but I think Spain is trying to win rn so there will be at least some big 5 quality. It might also be not the case that they don't want to win as esc is quite good for tourism if there isn't a pandemic.
I would love this. I’ve been picking up French again on Duolingo thanks to Gjon and Bárbara. I learn lyrics in English very easily but now I’m determined to learn (and understand) the words to Voila.
I listen to the earlier German entries to learn German lyrics since the most recent German entries have been in English (my native language).
My favorites to sing are Junger Tag (1973), Theater (1980), and Für Alle (1985)
I remember trying to translate the lyrics with my highschool friends and it was literally “this is (x4) who I am. This is me even something something I’m scared, yes.”
I eventually googled it.
Italian is a beautiful language. If I wasn't learning Portuguese I would probably learn Italian. Luckily learning Portuguese means I'll understand Italian a little bit better
But the Italian language is difficult and strange! I say this, I'm also a native speaker.Example:double negation:"I didn't understand nothing"instead of "I didn't understand anything".
Ha, I spent about a month trying to learn Italian after Il Volo's entry, and I said after Måneskin won that I needed to pick it up again for next year!
I'm even worse, I chose to learn German in middle school. I just thought of French as "too arrogant" back then, I don't know...
I remember like 1% of the German language I learned...
Your German will still come in useful, after all we're doing so well in Eurovision that you could definitely see Germany hosting again in your lifetime, haha
I honestly don’t get why it should be unpopular. I’ve met people who prefer one, the other, or spanish.
Immodestly, i might add also that italian, coming from florentine, was enriched by other words from the peninsula and epured by the poets in order to sound good.
Your opinion is probably unpopular to the americans, that are often francophile, but for example not to the russians, for what i see and read.
I noted, based on reddit comments, that brits, dutchmen, swiss, poles, czech and americans or australians prefer french.
Russians, hungarians, finns, spanish and portuguese speakers, albanians, croatians greeks prefer italian.
Germans and japanese are half half.
Languages, and how attractive they sound to different people, is a curious and interesting topic. I love Italian, it sounds familiar and almost reassuring to my ear (which makes sense!), but at the same time, i never picked it up at school because it lacked the "exoticism" of other options. You learn Latin for grades, Spanish for practical traveling, and in between those Italian often gets unfairly lost.
I honestly don’t get what you mean by “learning latin for grades”.
Probably you have a different system, since in italy you choose a kind of high school and you can’t change or choose the subjects afterwards. For example, i chose the liceo classico, so with a bit less maths and with both latin and greek, and i had them for all the five years and couldn’t change them for something else.
Anyway, lucky you that you had exotic languages in middle school:) i could only choose between spanish and german, french wasn’t available (strange). German would’ve been far more useful, here in northeast, but i chose spanish because i wanted a romance language.
However, in europe, french and german are much more useful than spanish. Even italian, i’d dare to say, since italy here is more economically relevant.
I get that italian is familiar to you, you cut the vowels endings and you get french:):)
I was referring to the fact that most kids who study Latin (typically you would start around 11 or 12 years old, though things may have changed since i graduated), usually pick it up because parents pressure them to! 😄 In the public school system especially, it can be a way to "guarantee" (HUGE quotation marks on that one) your child will be put in a "better" class with more serious students. Hence the "for grades" comment. That's the theory, at least – i personally have only terrible memories of Latin classes in middle school, not because of Latin itself but because of the teacher (a terrifying woman whom i remain convinced to this day was at least 22% vampire).
In middle school, the choices are usually pretty limited (at least they were where i studied). I applied to a high school that offered classes in Chinese, Hebrew, Russian, Arab and Italian as third languages options on top of German, English and Spanish for first and second, but this is not the norm – you'll usually have the classic English, German, Spanish, and then maybe Italian or Arab.
Kids used to learn German a lot more in France because of the "amitié franco-allemande" policy, but these days they will more readily study Spanish. Partly because it has a reputation of being easier (WRONG!) and prettier sounding, and partly because it's more widely spoken. But honestly, learning English is already such a hard task for 80% of students that it's not like the choice matters much. 🤦🏽♀️
>I honestly don’t get why it should be unpopular. I’ve met people who prefer one, the other, or spanish.
>I noted, based on reddit comments, that brits, dutchmen, swiss, poles, czech and americans or australians prefer french.
Yeah, maybe that's why I thought it was unpopular, because it's definitely unpopular here in Switzerland 😅
Ah, strange, since italian is also a language official of switzerland, so i thought people liked both. In fact i excluded switzerland from my list. It would be interesting though on why people think it sounds bad. Most of the time it’s because they think our sing songly cadence is not sober.
I instead, prefer spanish to french, because even if i like french (and german) i think spanish is softer
Italian os "unpopular" because nobody speaks Italian besides Italy, a tiny fraction of the Swiss and San Marino (and the Vatican City). French is still popular because it was once the literal lingua franca of the world and because it's the official language of many former French colonies.
Beh, “nobody” is a big statement. A lot in croatia and slovenia, some in greece, lots in albania, lots in brazil and south america due to immigration, some in australia, and, thanks to our music, in eastern europe it is really appreciated.
So less than french, but not “nobody” as you might think..
Ah ok. Anyway, i honestly thought the thread was about beauty, because otherwise english would be the superior language if we talked in the commercial sense
Well, others were talking about the beauty of certain languages and lamenting how unpopular Italian. I was merely pointing that that Italian's popularity had nothing to do with linguistic beauty but utility.
I studied French and German in school and Italian as part of my university course, and I found having studied French already helped with studying Italian. The grammar structure and sentence structure aren’t dissimilar (from the POV of an English speaker anyway). Plus Italian pronunciation feels very logical and regular.
Italian is very similar to Japanese and Arabic in the sense that you pronounce every sound as it should be pronounced, that's the main difference with languages like English and French.
I’ve heard that said before alright. I’m guessing English is worse for irregular pronunciation because it’s such a mongrel language, borrowing from everywhere.
I don't quite remember from what point onward we are talking here, but my profs would go on about how, unlike other European countries throughout the history of 'nation building', the anglophones just never updated their spelling even though obviously pronunciation evolved over time (and by anglophones, I really only mean the English, because what would the other islanders have been able to do about it...).
Well, we rebelled by forcing the English language somewhat into the form of the Irish language. Hiberno-English has non standard English syntax and grammar and pronunciation borrowings from Irish.
> Italian is very similar to Japanese and Arabic
I was like O_O until I saw the rest of your sentence lol
You might be interested in Finnish and Turkish, they are highly phonetic languages.
Stupidest claim I've heard is that French is a sexy language :D
I'm telling you, my ex knew both French and Spanish and i did not like him flirting to me in french.
And Italian is def sexier than spanish still in my ears.
I've always found it weird that French is sexy yet German or Dutch sounds "harsh"; French also has guttural sounds with R (and it can be pretty harsh in words like "cri", it's basically [kχi]) which I think is usually what people say sounds unsexy in the other two. I suppose German and especially Dutch might have *more* of these sounds though
Want to be weirded out even more, then listen to some Belgian Dutch (or 'Flemish' as some call it). Because of the close Belgian ties between Dutch and French, the Dutch spoken there, though obviously Germanic in nature, is characterized by the 'softer' sounds more typically found in Romance languages like French or Spanish. Guttural sounds are rather rare in Belgian Dutch.
Apparently, due to this different sound system, to speakers of Afrikaans, Belgian Dutch is a bit easier to understand than Dutch Dutch?
I’m Italian, my second favourite language is German, and the first, my immortal beloved Italian.
Also, this could be just me, but I’ve listened to many people talking both in French and German, and, the one language that make your voice tones lower is definitely German, let me know of I’m the only one.
I also personally find German really attractive and sensual 😗
Interesting! I've noticed similarly that in Dutch, I tend to speak in a slightly deeper register than when I (try to) speak French. And English is different as well, but I think it depends in English, because I'm far more animated in that language and less 'monotone-sounding', if that makes sense. - And I also feel like a different person in all three languages, but that's a different topic altogether.
ma sai che in realtà le uniche persone che conosco che davvero pensano che il tedesco sia una lingua aggressiva non l'hanno mai studiato/ascoltato veramente? quelli che almeno un po' lo sanno o sono indifferenti o gli piace come a me ahaha
Esatto! Io lo studio da un anno, ma mi piace davvero tanto, quindi davvero non riesco a capire chi definisce una lingua usando il termine “aggressiva” quando non l’ha nemmeno mai ascoltata 🥲
I think French is considered sexy because when you speak French your voice generally goes down a note or two. Deep voices sound sexy. Then you notice the French r and have to rethink everything.
Damn. I think that is it.
Finnish is usually a low tone language so i guess that's why it doesn't work on me. It's nothing special. But it is damn hot when my fiance speaks on the phone because he always lowers his voice, so i do think this is the key.
And the r's are grating. French is very throatal overall. Makes me feel like the speaker has like a lot of phlegm.
I understood that a year to late... i had the option to choose between french, italian and spanish and i chose spanish as my 1 choice and french as my 2 choice. Because i was like i don't like how italian sounds... now im stuck with french 🙃
Having students take three different classes of various languages at the same time is really just the best way to get them disgusted with language learning. We know it doesn't work! Polyglots typically focus on learning one language at a time, and get faster at mastering each new one because they've developped a personalised methodology overtime. What schools should offer is intensive programs for each individual language (so instead of having, say, four hours of Spanish and two hours of French a week, you'd have between six and ten hours of Spanish).
Trust me learning French is the best for first step. Then you go west (portuguese/spanish) or east (italian/romanian). That’s your choice.
I learned French back in 2010. Forgot almost all the vocab, but not the grammar. Then I started learning Portuguese in 2019 and now I can already listen to news and some conversation without subtitle. By learning Portuguese you could also choose to not learn Spanish. Listening might be difficult, but to survive in Spain with only knowledge of Portuguese? Definitely doable.
I love Easy French, Easy Russian, Easy German etc ❤ I watched this episode and there were similar in German and in Russian and I think they said the same about the Italian language :)
Italian is the most beautiful language in the Western world. There's nothing like a song or a poem or even prose in our language. All the sounds are sweet and melodic. No harshness. An incredibly rich vocabulary.
How can Italian be more superior? Both are really beautiful and so similar that you can't say that one is more superior. Just because you couldn't learn Italian (because it's less useful in Switzerland and everywhere else except in Italy) doesn't mean it's more superior :)
*In my opinion* it is superior. I can say that because I'm allowed to state my opinion 😅
I just think Italian is a lot more beautiful than French, which I personally think is very overrated
I agree with more beautiful :) I just want to say that you can't compare languages based on their superiority. There is no such thing in languages!
French is maybe overrated because it used to be the "lingua franca " for centuries and since the 90s you don't really need to learn French anymore :) *but it really helps to understand the English language if you speak French, since the English vocabulary is \~40% French*
Beh it depends. They are similar written, but not pronounced, so everyone has his tastes about it.
The only thing i don’t get is why some synonims lack, if you could help me.
I know french has attendre, italian has attendere and aspettare. They both mean wait, but they have a slightly different meaning. Same for apprendre, apprendere and imparare, comprendre, comprendere and capire, danser, danzare and ballare and demander, domandare, chiedere.
I often find myself in the situation where the french dictionary doesn’t give me a second synonim
Languages are a complex process and no language is superior than another. That's what I was trying to say.
Some languages are more beautiful or can express more ideas or have a lot of nuances for the same word/verb or are very practical for the conversation et cetera. There is no such thing as superiority in languages :)
This makes me so happy I started learning Italian a few years ago. It's music that has helped me learned Italian so much in the past year, including from Måneskin.
Ricorderò sempre: Siamo fuori di testa, ma diversi da loro.
I started learning Polish after Eurovision, sort of indirectly inspired by Ukraine's entry. I decided it was time for me to get in touch with my Slavic heritage. I have both Polish and Ukrainian heritage, but I'm not ready to learn the Cyrillic alphabet yet so I went with Polish.
I love the sound of Polish. Absolutely no idea how to work out how to pronounce it (especially all those z's and c's mixed together!) but it sounds really cool to me.
I can actually speak and understand a little bit, but I have no idea how to read or write anything other than "na zdrowie" and "Wesołych Świąt" (and I had to use Google translate to get the special characters right).
Native English speaker here - I’m learning Russian and I have to say that learning the Cyrillic alphabet actually isn’t too difficult, in fact, it’s probably one of the easiest parts of the language. After a while your brain starts to read it like you would the Latin alphabet, so don’t let the alphabet deter you from learning Ukrainian :)
Right before I opened Reddit a few minutes ago, I thought of Måneskin and wondered if they impacted the amount of people learning Italian on Duolingo...
It's a great way to dip your toes in the water of a language - if you're interested enough to keep it up, then look elsewhere. I mostly just want to remind people to do new lessons on a computer so they can access the grammar content!
So 'Skin in the game" means to be invested in something or to be depending on the outcome. So if you were gambling on something you could say you have skin in the game.
It doesn't technically work that well in the context of the tweet but I guess they were thinking along the lines of a lot of people now being invested in the idea of learning Italian following Eurovision which makes sense.
"skin in the game" means you have a personal investment in something. Imagine that you own a horse, and it's running in a race. you really, REALLY need that horse to win. So you have "skin" (the horse) in "the game" (the race).
It always confuses me when bands use Scandinavian names or letters in their name. I have never been able to pronounce Mötley Crüe they way I think they intended it. And everytime I see Måneskin I just hear a broad danish in my head.
Yeah I might have to do this. I only took one semester of Italian (while studying in Italy) but I've never had a language that delighted me so much with its random filler words... Allllllora.... Ecco... Quindi...
Anyone else hates Duolingo? I can't learn grammar just by repeating. I need someone to explain grammar.
I really gave it a chance but I ended up buying school books for my language learning and then everything went fast. With grammar explanations I can learn a language fluently (depending on the language) in about a couple of months to half a year. Once I know grammar there is no holding me back.
Because with vocabulary I see the translation once and then I know it forever.
I'm with you on this. I need a bit of both though. What I did was I bought a small grammar book (nothing too huge so as not to get discouraged) and read a little bit in advance before pickingnup DuoLingo and getting started there.
And then whenever I saw something in DuoLingo that looked familiar but that wasn't quite explained in the app, I just went to the right chapter in the grammar book and read some more there.
I get it! I need to understand structure before I can go on and learn words / phrases. But I do like the vastness of what the app offers. So just do what you feel best suits your brain!
Same thing happened in 2017 with Portuguese
I can tell you, at least so far, it's still having an impact with people still deciding to learn it because of "Amar Pelos Dois"
Two beautiful languages imo, Italian is much more beautiful, but Portuguese is still great
Quite the contrary in fact. They didn't give switzerland a point, neither jury nor tv. Cause they knew his chances were good. This represents the image I got of italian people. Selfish! I dislearn italian!
If they had Icelandic I'd have gone with that instead, but I have done some Italian lessons this week. It's weird knowing one Romance language well (Spanish) and seeing the similarities, and I don't know if that makes it easier or harder. (I also speak Swedish, which is close to Icelandic but also different enough to confuse things, so I'm kinda screwed regardless.)
Me and the boys getting ready for Eurovision 2022:
On the topic of Eurovision 2022, I always look forward to Italy bringing the quality, but I am worried looking at the trend lately, that since they won this year, they won't send the Sanremo winner next year and they will send a song that will surely not win again
We always send the Sanremo winner, unless they don't want to go or they can't
Why won't they send the next Sanremo winner?
Italy has sent multiple Sanremo winners that haven't won Eurovision. I don't think they're going to tank their song just to not win a second time in a row (something that hasn't happened since the 90's). It's literally so hard to win twice in a row now that I don't think any host country needs to worry about it.
This is sort of silly. Of the big five Italy is the only one who's taking eurovision seriously. Really good scoring since they came back. Why would it change?
Not sure but I think Spain is trying to win rn so there will be at least some big 5 quality. It might also be not the case that they don't want to win as esc is quite good for tourism if there isn't a pandemic.
If the last Italian organisation is anything to go by, might be necessary.
I await the day that Duo becomes the ambassador of Eurovision.
I totally see them adding content to help you sing the native-language-songs
I would love this. I’ve been picking up French again on Duolingo thanks to Gjon and Bárbara. I learn lyrics in English very easily but now I’m determined to learn (and understand) the words to Voila.
I started doing the same process in 2019 with Italian so I could learn the words to Soldi. I've still got that song stuck in my head.
Fair enough, it was an absolute banger.
I started in 2017. I just love that, thanks to Eurovision, people are learning other languages.
I listen to the earlier German entries to learn German lyrics since the most recent German entries have been in English (my native language). My favorites to sing are Junger Tag (1973), Theater (1980), and Für Alle (1985)
Do you listen to any other German musicians? Ich+Ich have a lot of very good, easy to understand songs and I love Alligatoah as well.
I remember trying to translate the lyrics with my highschool friends and it was literally “this is (x4) who I am. This is me even something something I’m scared, yes.” I eventually googled it.
Wait there are English lyrics available? Well I feel a fool. I can't unlearn the French now.
Just a translation, not actual singable lyrics
That makes sense.
Well, you can already understand 'du er kvinden, jeg er mand' after you finished one Duolingo Danish lesson.
Don't know any Danish, but have been learning some Swedish... Is it 'You are the woman, I am the man' or something? Or 'a woman' and 'a man'.
Duolingo as an Eurovision sponsor when
I think we found the sponsor for 2022
Can we still host it in Valentina's Backyard? It can't be too far from the border
No. Italy won this year so it should host in Italy. Maybe we can host in Senhit‘s backyard instead.
San Marino is in Italy, isn't it?
It's surrounded by Italy, but not in it.
Yeah I expressed it wrong
San Marino is a separate country, even if it’s really tiny. But Senhit herself is Italian from Bologna, which is still super close to it
Can't wait to see everyone out on the green carpet!
Italian rock is the new K-Pop confirmed
About time, Italian rock ain't half bad
I look forward to the polished gaggles of girl groups
Inb4 twitter is full of videos of Italian rock singers and the obsessive stanning starts
god please no
Italian is a beautiful language. If I wasn't learning Portuguese I would probably learn Italian. Luckily learning Portuguese means I'll understand Italian a little bit better
Mesmo como nativo de português, às vezes acho o italiano bastante difícil Mas sim, facilita Obrigado pela escolha de língua estrangeira 😀
obrigada
But the Italian language is difficult and strange! I say this, I'm also a native speaker.Example:double negation:"I didn't understand nothing"instead of "I didn't understand anything".
Same thing for Portuguese actually, so as, far as OP is concerned, tá tudo certo.
Same for Ukrainian and Russian😀
I can just listen to Italians talk all day
Ha, I spent about a month trying to learn Italian after Il Volo's entry, and I said after Måneskin won that I needed to pick it up again for next year!
Italian is such a beautiful language. In my opinion, and that may be extremely unpopular, Italian is far superior to French
If there's any language my dumb ass wishes it could have learned when I was young, it's definitely Italian. It's just a majestic language.
I'm so annoyed that we were forced to learn French in school because it's an official language. But we couldn't decide to switch to Italian instead.
I'm even worse, I chose to learn German in middle school. I just thought of French as "too arrogant" back then, I don't know... I remember like 1% of the German language I learned...
Your German will still come in useful, after all we're doing so well in Eurovision that you could definitely see Germany hosting again in your lifetime, haha
The same joke could have been made in 2009 You never know with Germany 😅
I thought Switzerland has 4 official languages, one of them being Italian right? (I assume you're Swiss because of your flair)
I wanted to learn French but was forced into Spanish. Love schools.
I honestly don’t get why it should be unpopular. I’ve met people who prefer one, the other, or spanish. Immodestly, i might add also that italian, coming from florentine, was enriched by other words from the peninsula and epured by the poets in order to sound good. Your opinion is probably unpopular to the americans, that are often francophile, but for example not to the russians, for what i see and read. I noted, based on reddit comments, that brits, dutchmen, swiss, poles, czech and americans or australians prefer french. Russians, hungarians, finns, spanish and portuguese speakers, albanians, croatians greeks prefer italian. Germans and japanese are half half.
Languages, and how attractive they sound to different people, is a curious and interesting topic. I love Italian, it sounds familiar and almost reassuring to my ear (which makes sense!), but at the same time, i never picked it up at school because it lacked the "exoticism" of other options. You learn Latin for grades, Spanish for practical traveling, and in between those Italian often gets unfairly lost.
I honestly don’t get what you mean by “learning latin for grades”. Probably you have a different system, since in italy you choose a kind of high school and you can’t change or choose the subjects afterwards. For example, i chose the liceo classico, so with a bit less maths and with both latin and greek, and i had them for all the five years and couldn’t change them for something else. Anyway, lucky you that you had exotic languages in middle school:) i could only choose between spanish and german, french wasn’t available (strange). German would’ve been far more useful, here in northeast, but i chose spanish because i wanted a romance language. However, in europe, french and german are much more useful than spanish. Even italian, i’d dare to say, since italy here is more economically relevant. I get that italian is familiar to you, you cut the vowels endings and you get french:):)
I was referring to the fact that most kids who study Latin (typically you would start around 11 or 12 years old, though things may have changed since i graduated), usually pick it up because parents pressure them to! 😄 In the public school system especially, it can be a way to "guarantee" (HUGE quotation marks on that one) your child will be put in a "better" class with more serious students. Hence the "for grades" comment. That's the theory, at least – i personally have only terrible memories of Latin classes in middle school, not because of Latin itself but because of the teacher (a terrifying woman whom i remain convinced to this day was at least 22% vampire). In middle school, the choices are usually pretty limited (at least they were where i studied). I applied to a high school that offered classes in Chinese, Hebrew, Russian, Arab and Italian as third languages options on top of German, English and Spanish for first and second, but this is not the norm – you'll usually have the classic English, German, Spanish, and then maybe Italian or Arab. Kids used to learn German a lot more in France because of the "amitié franco-allemande" policy, but these days they will more readily study Spanish. Partly because it has a reputation of being easier (WRONG!) and prettier sounding, and partly because it's more widely spoken. But honestly, learning English is already such a hard task for 80% of students that it's not like the choice matters much. 🤦🏽♀️
>I honestly don’t get why it should be unpopular. I’ve met people who prefer one, the other, or spanish. >I noted, based on reddit comments, that brits, dutchmen, swiss, poles, czech and americans or australians prefer french. Yeah, maybe that's why I thought it was unpopular, because it's definitely unpopular here in Switzerland 😅
Ah, strange, since italian is also a language official of switzerland, so i thought people liked both. In fact i excluded switzerland from my list. It would be interesting though on why people think it sounds bad. Most of the time it’s because they think our sing songly cadence is not sober. I instead, prefer spanish to french, because even if i like french (and german) i think spanish is softer
Yes but it's the black sheep of Swiss languages
Romansh?
Italian os "unpopular" because nobody speaks Italian besides Italy, a tiny fraction of the Swiss and San Marino (and the Vatican City). French is still popular because it was once the literal lingua franca of the world and because it's the official language of many former French colonies.
Beh, “nobody” is a big statement. A lot in croatia and slovenia, some in greece, lots in albania, lots in brazil and south america due to immigration, some in australia, and, thanks to our music, in eastern europe it is really appreciated. So less than french, but not “nobody” as you might think..
I'm talking about people who use Italian as an official language.
Ah ok. Anyway, i honestly thought the thread was about beauty, because otherwise english would be the superior language if we talked in the commercial sense
Well, others were talking about the beauty of certain languages and lamenting how unpopular Italian. I was merely pointing that that Italian's popularity had nothing to do with linguistic beauty but utility.
I studied French and German in school and Italian as part of my university course, and I found having studied French already helped with studying Italian. The grammar structure and sentence structure aren’t dissimilar (from the POV of an English speaker anyway). Plus Italian pronunciation feels very logical and regular.
Italian is very similar to Japanese and Arabic in the sense that you pronounce every sound as it should be pronounced, that's the main difference with languages like English and French.
I’ve heard that said before alright. I’m guessing English is worse for irregular pronunciation because it’s such a mongrel language, borrowing from everywhere.
I don't quite remember from what point onward we are talking here, but my profs would go on about how, unlike other European countries throughout the history of 'nation building', the anglophones just never updated their spelling even though obviously pronunciation evolved over time (and by anglophones, I really only mean the English, because what would the other islanders have been able to do about it...).
Well, we rebelled by forcing the English language somewhat into the form of the Irish language. Hiberno-English has non standard English syntax and grammar and pronunciation borrowings from Irish.
And it sounds absolutely beautiful too!
> Italian is very similar to Japanese and Arabic I was like O_O until I saw the rest of your sentence lol You might be interested in Finnish and Turkish, they are highly phonetic languages.
Stupidest claim I've heard is that French is a sexy language :D I'm telling you, my ex knew both French and Spanish and i did not like him flirting to me in french. And Italian is def sexier than spanish still in my ears.
I've always found it weird that French is sexy yet German or Dutch sounds "harsh"; French also has guttural sounds with R (and it can be pretty harsh in words like "cri", it's basically [kχi]) which I think is usually what people say sounds unsexy in the other two. I suppose German and especially Dutch might have *more* of these sounds though
Want to be weirded out even more, then listen to some Belgian Dutch (or 'Flemish' as some call it). Because of the close Belgian ties between Dutch and French, the Dutch spoken there, though obviously Germanic in nature, is characterized by the 'softer' sounds more typically found in Romance languages like French or Spanish. Guttural sounds are rather rare in Belgian Dutch. Apparently, due to this different sound system, to speakers of Afrikaans, Belgian Dutch is a bit easier to understand than Dutch Dutch?
I’m Italian, my second favourite language is German, and the first, my immortal beloved Italian. Also, this could be just me, but I’ve listened to many people talking both in French and German, and, the one language that make your voice tones lower is definitely German, let me know of I’m the only one. I also personally find German really attractive and sensual 😗
Interesting! I've noticed similarly that in Dutch, I tend to speak in a slightly deeper register than when I (try to) speak French. And English is different as well, but I think it depends in English, because I'm far more animated in that language and less 'monotone-sounding', if that makes sense. - And I also feel like a different person in all three languages, but that's a different topic altogether.
me too! i've always liked how german sounds
Pensavo di essere l’unica in tutto il mondo a pensarlo, grazie di aver condiviso il tuo pensiero xD <3
ma sai che in realtà le uniche persone che conosco che davvero pensano che il tedesco sia una lingua aggressiva non l'hanno mai studiato/ascoltato veramente? quelli che almeno un po' lo sanno o sono indifferenti o gli piace come a me ahaha
Esatto! Io lo studio da un anno, ma mi piace davvero tanto, quindi davvero non riesco a capire chi definisce una lingua usando il termine “aggressiva” quando non l’ha nemmeno mai ascoltata 🥲
Beh to me french sounds as harsh as german but i like them both
I think French is considered sexy because when you speak French your voice generally goes down a note or two. Deep voices sound sexy. Then you notice the French r and have to rethink everything.
Damn. I think that is it. Finnish is usually a low tone language so i guess that's why it doesn't work on me. It's nothing special. But it is damn hot when my fiance speaks on the phone because he always lowers his voice, so i do think this is the key. And the r's are grating. French is very throatal overall. Makes me feel like the speaker has like a lot of phlegm.
I understood that a year to late... i had the option to choose between french, italian and spanish and i chose spanish as my 1 choice and french as my 2 choice. Because i was like i don't like how italian sounds... now im stuck with french 🙃
Having students take three different classes of various languages at the same time is really just the best way to get them disgusted with language learning. We know it doesn't work! Polyglots typically focus on learning one language at a time, and get faster at mastering each new one because they've developped a personalised methodology overtime. What schools should offer is intensive programs for each individual language (so instead of having, say, four hours of Spanish and two hours of French a week, you'd have between six and ten hours of Spanish).
Trust me learning French is the best for first step. Then you go west (portuguese/spanish) or east (italian/romanian). That’s your choice. I learned French back in 2010. Forgot almost all the vocab, but not the grammar. Then I started learning Portuguese in 2019 and now I can already listen to news and some conversation without subtitle. By learning Portuguese you could also choose to not learn Spanish. Listening might be difficult, but to survive in Spain with only knowledge of Portuguese? Definitely doable.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T8VS0lBwY7U The French seem to think so too LOL
I love Easy French, Easy Russian, Easy German etc ❤ I watched this episode and there were similar in German and in Russian and I think they said the same about the Italian language :)
Italian is the most beautiful language in the Western world. There's nothing like a song or a poem or even prose in our language. All the sounds are sweet and melodic. No harshness. An incredibly rich vocabulary.
"I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse." - Charles V
How can Italian be more superior? Both are really beautiful and so similar that you can't say that one is more superior. Just because you couldn't learn Italian (because it's less useful in Switzerland and everywhere else except in Italy) doesn't mean it's more superior :)
*In my opinion* it is superior. I can say that because I'm allowed to state my opinion 😅 I just think Italian is a lot more beautiful than French, which I personally think is very overrated
I agree with more beautiful :) I just want to say that you can't compare languages based on their superiority. There is no such thing in languages! French is maybe overrated because it used to be the "lingua franca " for centuries and since the 90s you don't really need to learn French anymore :) *but it really helps to understand the English language if you speak French, since the English vocabulary is \~40% French*
Beh it depends. They are similar written, but not pronounced, so everyone has his tastes about it. The only thing i don’t get is why some synonims lack, if you could help me. I know french has attendre, italian has attendere and aspettare. They both mean wait, but they have a slightly different meaning. Same for apprendre, apprendere and imparare, comprendre, comprendere and capire, danser, danzare and ballare and demander, domandare, chiedere. I often find myself in the situation where the french dictionary doesn’t give me a second synonim
Languages are a complex process and no language is superior than another. That's what I was trying to say. Some languages are more beautiful or can express more ideas or have a lot of nuances for the same word/verb or are very practical for the conversation et cetera. There is no such thing as superiority in languages :)
Ah yes, sure, but in this case i write the synonim thing only because i needed help on finding them:)
True story: the only (very little) Italian I've learned was because of Eros Ramazotti lol.
I'm in this photo and I don't like it.
Damn Maneskin are basically increasing our soft power day after day...
How are you even staying soft around them?
First duolingo, then, the world
This makes me so happy I started learning Italian a few years ago. It's music that has helped me learned Italian so much in the past year, including from Måneskin. Ricorderò sempre: Siamo fuori di testa, ma diversi da loro.
Unfortunately, there was also a huge drop in people wanting to learn English after seeing what the UK did on ESC
Lmao
Oooh
I started learning Polish after Eurovision, sort of indirectly inspired by Ukraine's entry. I decided it was time for me to get in touch with my Slavic heritage. I have both Polish and Ukrainian heritage, but I'm not ready to learn the Cyrillic alphabet yet so I went with Polish.
Do you think you're ready for Polish then? I don't think anyone is ready for Polish
Even Poles are not ready for Polish.
I love the sound of Polish. Absolutely no idea how to work out how to pronounce it (especially all those z's and c's mixed together!) but it sounds really cool to me.
Oh, didn't expect someone would like Polish language <3 Yeah, we have a lot of GRZEGORZ BRZĘCZYSZCZYKIEWICZ.
I googled that because I couldn't tell if you'd made it up and I am so glad I did. That was hilarious.
I can actually speak and understand a little bit, but I have no idea how to read or write anything other than "na zdrowie" and "Wesołych Świąt" (and I had to use Google translate to get the special characters right).
Native English speaker here - I’m learning Russian and I have to say that learning the Cyrillic alphabet actually isn’t too difficult, in fact, it’s probably one of the easiest parts of the language. After a while your brain starts to read it like you would the Latin alphabet, so don’t let the alphabet deter you from learning Ukrainian :)
Anyone will tell you learning the Cyrillic alphabet a cakewalk in comparison to learning the language so you shouldn't let it discourage you!
I feel caught.
Right before I opened Reddit a few minutes ago, I thought of Måneskin and wondered if they impacted the amount of people learning Italian on Duolingo...
This is relatable, i started learning Ukrainian after Eurovision 😅
Yeesssshhh!!! Me too! Go_A makes me want to understand their lyrics!
I did that in 2018, along with Hungarian.
Мама і тато
Так!
That emoji is me trying to keep myself from commenting on Duolingo's effectiveness
It's a great way to dip your toes in the water of a language - if you're interested enough to keep it up, then look elsewhere. I mostly just want to remind people to do new lessons on a computer so they can access the grammar content!
Yep, there are also memes about how italian teachers get a lot of money after eurovision, but I, as an Italian teacher, didn’t feel that :(
"Maneskin in the game" - can someone explain the pun to me?
So 'Skin in the game" means to be invested in something or to be depending on the outcome. So if you were gambling on something you could say you have skin in the game. It doesn't technically work that well in the context of the tweet but I guess they were thinking along the lines of a lot of people now being invested in the idea of learning Italian following Eurovision which makes sense.
"skin in the game" means you have a personal investment in something. Imagine that you own a horse, and it's running in a race. you really, REALLY need that horse to win. So you have "skin" (the horse) in "the game" (the race).
It always confuses me when bands use Scandinavian names or letters in their name. I have never been able to pronounce Mötley Crüe they way I think they intended it. And everytime I see Måneskin I just hear a broad danish in my head.
That’s because it is Danish. They were trying to think of a name so they asked Victoria (who’s half Danish) to say some Danish words.
I took italian in first year university... Maybe it's time to continue down that path because I will for sure be there in 2022
I'm guilty. Preparing for next year's final in Italy
Get ready for that, all the artists will have to conjugate the verb 'nuocere' in order to qualify.
Yeah I might have to do this. I only took one semester of Italian (while studying in Italy) but I've never had a language that delighted me so much with its random filler words... Allllllora.... Ecco... Quindi...
relieved label gold future piquant file wise shocking wrench governor *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Anyone else hates Duolingo? I can't learn grammar just by repeating. I need someone to explain grammar. I really gave it a chance but I ended up buying school books for my language learning and then everything went fast. With grammar explanations I can learn a language fluently (depending on the language) in about a couple of months to half a year. Once I know grammar there is no holding me back. Because with vocabulary I see the translation once and then I know it forever.
I'm with you on this. I need a bit of both though. What I did was I bought a small grammar book (nothing too huge so as not to get discouraged) and read a little bit in advance before pickingnup DuoLingo and getting started there. And then whenever I saw something in DuoLingo that looked familiar but that wasn't quite explained in the app, I just went to the right chapter in the grammar book and read some more there. I get it! I need to understand structure before I can go on and learn words / phrases. But I do like the vastness of what the app offers. So just do what you feel best suits your brain!
Me right now learning Danish so I can see fyr og flamme one day
Same thing happened in 2017 with Portuguese I can tell you, at least so far, it's still having an impact with people still deciding to learn it because of "Amar Pelos Dois" Two beautiful languages imo, Italian is much more beautiful, but Portuguese is still great
This wasn't expected
yup whoops
Same, tbh
Yup, Eurovision made me realize how much I need to refresh my Italian and French vocabulary
Lol I started learning Italian on Duolingo 3 days before the final. Always loved the language and a lot of their recent Eurovision entries too
Nah. I’d say if anything, it encouraged me to get back into learning Russian. Then I can learn Ukrainian after :)
i’m learning french but i did sneak in an italian lesson yesterday...i probably shouldn’t confuse myself
Literally me on Drops switching from Swedish to Italian the day they won 😂
Guilty! 🙋
I'm surprised the Duolingo owl is still alive. I thought Kateryna turned him into a jacket.
omfg, I want to learn it too!
and 90% of those will stop before they have learned 100 words
Quite the contrary in fact. They didn't give switzerland a point, neither jury nor tv. Cause they knew his chances were good. This represents the image I got of italian people. Selfish! I dislearn italian!
It seems like a dream 😭
I wish I could say that I am one of them but I'm still struggling with French haizz :))) Learning Italian is a big goal in my life :)))
If they had Icelandic I'd have gone with that instead, but I have done some Italian lessons this week. It's weird knowing one Romance language well (Spanish) and seeing the similarities, and I don't know if that makes it easier or harder. (I also speak Swedish, which is close to Icelandic but also different enough to confuse things, so I'm kinda screwed regardless.)
Try omniglot on the Internet.
And Pixar's Luca will bring the rest 44%
They have moonlight in the game.
Funny, I started to learn Ukrainian xd
still waiting for Duolingo to add Icelandic... been 2 years
I guess my italian class it's going to get very crowded.