*Because I'm Lazy, Mostly* WHY DON'T YOU KNOW ITALIAN? | 《plastic心heart》

[00:00:03]Hello and welcome to Americans Learn. My name is Lauren and today I am looking at a video that was suggested by one of our Discord members, so Netty94, thank you so much for the suggestion. The video is called Why Don't You Know Italian? And the answer, dear Netty, is uh because I'm out of practice.

[00:00:21]Um >> [laughter] >> That is that is the the answer is the answer is I'm out of practice. I used to be at least possible in Italian, not not really fluent specifically. Um but I knew some Look, I still have I brought props with me today. I have all of my like Italian like music books that like I I learned a bunch of four uh when I was doing when I was when I was doing opera. Um By opera I mean I did voice lessons and I had to learn some opera songs and techniques. Um but then I look, I have I have my Italian like books as well from from when I was like learning it. Like look, I was filling it out. I was doing the work.

[00:01:10]Can't see that, but I was working. I was doing my Italian.

[00:01:14]I was practicing it. And then I got you know, verbs.

[00:01:18]Proof Proof that I was learning Italian.

[00:01:21]And then um I I stopped.

[00:01:26]But I still have all my books because I was always intending to go back and learn more.

[00:01:31]That was always the intention. So now that I've dragged them out, um maybe I will actually get into that. But anyway, let's get in to the video and find out why why I should absolutely get back into Italian.

[00:01:47]>> Italian's the goat, but how do you tackle learning it? Well, look no further because this video will showcase everything you ever needed to know about Italian in under 12 minutes. Standard Italian is almost entirely phonetic.

[00:01:58]Thank god. What makes things even better is that the consonants you see on screen right now match up one-to-one. But what may have also caught your eyes that a few of them are missing. W was never >> Well, it's one of those things that's like it's phonetic, but you still have to know the the rules. I don't cuz like c h e is you know that's k.

[00:02:15]But like I don't know.

[00:02:18]c h in English makes the ch sound most of the time. So, that once you know the phonetic rules then yes, it makes sense.

[00:02:26]And also the thing with Italian which is nice is that you pronounce all of the letters. Like there's very few fake silent letters from what I recollect.

[00:02:33]>> used. These letters were used by the Romans to write Greek vocabulary, but more importantly nowadays they're only used in foreign words. And before you tell me it's easier to write k with c Look at that. That's That's inappropriate, man.

[00:02:47]>> That doesn't look That doesn't look like k either. I would I would prefer k a y or something probably.

[00:02:54]>> Okay.

[00:02:55]>> Get away from me. Speaking of h, in Italian it's used to distinguish between two words that would otherwise sound the same. It's also used to make a hard c and hard g sound in front of e and a.

[00:03:06]Look at it, kappa propagandisti. Look at it, it's beautiful. I'm sure you've done an Italian impression at least once in your life during which you likely doubled your consonants by accident. Not only is it a key feature of Italian, but you have to remember these are >> You do have to be careful with it though.

[00:03:21]Anno versus ano. They are different.

[00:03:24]>> used to distinguish between words. So, if you forget to double this n here, you're going to end up asking somebody how many orifices they have as opposed to how old they are.

[00:03:34]>> Any any whatever. I like I look Like I said, I remembered the core premise of that.

[00:03:41]>> What they probably never told you was that there's something called raddoppiamento sintattico. If a word starts with a consonant and has any of these in front of it, the spelling remains the same, but the consonant is doubled.

[00:03:52]>> This gave me trust issues, man. I always heard it, I swear. It's not a casa, it's a casa. Every Italian I asked denied it.

[00:04:01]No, bro, it's a casa. And then they literally say a casa. WHY DID YOU GASLIGHT ME?

[00:04:07]>> [screaming] >> Standard Italian has seven vowels. In practice though, most Italians can tell the difference, but simply ignore it, particularly in the north. [laughter] Sometimes >> Well, you know.

[00:04:18]You know, I feel like Italians get a rap for being chill and a little bit uh laissez faire, shall we say?

[00:04:25]>> times they're all closed, sometimes they invert them. Well, I've decided to personally humiliate myself and attempt to pronounce the difference for you the way I understand it. Venti. Venti.

[00:04:35]Botte. Botte.

[00:04:37]Hey, do you mind giving me some privacy here?

[00:04:40]>> Uh uh wait a minute. Remember to like, comment, and subscribe.

[00:04:42]>> If I normally open the grammar section on the most difficult part of the language, and I'm opening on verbs, what do you think that means? How does conjugating for all six persons sound like to you? The past tense is split into two aspects, with one focusing on things that were habitually occurring, and the other one focusing on things that were completed.

[00:05:04]>> I don't know what these mean. I don't like he's like throwing these phrases up here, but I'm like I have no idea what he actually is saying.

[00:05:09]And also, even when um I was reasonably okay at things like Italian or Spanish, if you want me to do anything other than present tense, it's probably not going to happen. My Spanish is still really bad about that. I was terrible at past tense and future tense in Spanish, and don't even forget like future participles and all of whatever those are. I barely know what a participle phrase is in English.

[00:05:32]You want me to say what no one did in Spanish? Absolutely not.

[00:05:35]>> I'm sure that the present tense isn't going to come as a surprise to anybody, but the future tense definitely will, because it's fully conjugated for, and you cannot use periphrastic constructions to make it. All this information is absolutely vital to learn if you want to have a normal conversation or read a book, but in colloquial vernacular, you don't necessarily have to always use these.

[00:05:53]Outside of Tuscany and Southern Italy, passato remoto has almost entirely been replaced by passato prossimo. The main difference between the two being >> Is picato picato picato. Is that like fight or beats?

[00:06:07]>> that one is about recent past and the other about distant past, but in reality people just pick one and stick with it as the generic completed past tense.

[00:06:23]We're starting this section of the >> I recognize welcome to hell.

[00:06:26]>> the ban of the ninth circle of hell.

[00:06:28][laughter] So, congiuntivo, the ban of all foreigners trying to learn Italian. In fact, it's actually so cursed that there's literally a song about how to properly use it aimed at Italians. And I mean actual Italians, not Tony Soprano Italians. Congiuntivo is used to talk about opinions, hypotheses, and uncertainty, and it tends to come after the word che, which is a conjunction.

[00:06:50]For example, somebody tells you, "I'm going to go fistfight Broly." And you tell them, Because this hasn't happened yet, and because we don't know when it will happen, it's a hypothetical scenario.

[00:07:01]Maybe he wins, maybe he doesn't, but overall, it looks pretty bad. If your native language doesn't have it, it's difficult to wrap your head around.

[00:07:08]Given that actual Italians get it wrong, I would advise you to take it slowly.

[00:07:12]Try to piece it together over time, and not to cram it all in one weekend, because that's how you get mind broken, and you wouldn't want that.

[00:07:20]>> And that's how you remember like two phrases of a language. If you try and cram it in like that, you remember two very specific phrases, and then you don't remember anything else.

[00:07:30]Which, as long as the phrases you remember are good and useful, then that's fine, but >> Would you? Would you? Congratulations, you made it to condizionale, which is, thankfully, the easy bit. Picture this.

[00:07:42]You walk into a Roman coffee shop and say, "Voglio un caffè." The barista looks at you.

[00:07:49]Roll back a little bit. Instead, you should have said, "Vorrei un caffè." I would like a coffee. The conditional form is basically the word would and the verb, but at the same time. It's what you use to make polite requests, so you don't sound like a complete Need someone to get out of your way?

[00:08:07]Now you're getting it. So, you've mastered Italian verbs. Congratulations, because when you're done with that, you've basically got 60% of the language figured out. The trouble is that there's still a few differences laying about.

[00:08:17]For starters, a really basic example would be that adjectives come after the noun. Think camicia di forza or gilet imbottito, which coincidentally is exactly where you might end up if you don't pay attention to this next part.

[00:08:29]Typically, this part of the video is me telling you that the language has cases.

[00:08:32]Italian has >> So, I think he's that's basically like a similar to other Romance languages where you would say like instead of like the blue bag in English, you would say el bolso azul in Spanish. Like you put the afterwards.

[00:08:46]>> as cases. Wait, come back. It's really simple. It's only in the pronouns.

[00:08:50]Why is it important to become acquainted with these distinctions? Because if you don't learn them, you're going to end up speaking like a certified idiot. I used to habitually say, "Lo do a lui." Which any Italian will tell you sounds terrible.

[00:09:05]WHEN THE PRONOUN IS directly performing [laughter] the action, it takes this form. Remember, Italian is pro-drop, but in certain cases you need to keep the pronoun for clarity.

[00:09:14]This next form you use when something is being done to someone. Like for example, you seeing them or Vegeta hitting them.

[00:09:22]Now this one is key to remember. I've heard that a lot of people mix up the accusative and the dative. In Italian, dare means to give, and that's what you need to remember it as. The case you use when you give something to someone.

[00:09:35]Remember to use these with prepositions and these with reflexive verbs.

[00:09:38]Reflexive means you're doing it to yourself.

[00:09:41]>> ITALIANO HAS GENDER NOUNS. YOU DIDN'T SEE this coming. Masculine >> I mean, everyone did because it's a romance language. It's one of those things that's like, I just got to watch this video again when I'm actually actively attempting to relearn Italian as opposed to just staring longingly at my books and saying, "I wish I had um look picked this up a little bit faster after I stopped learning it, you know?"

[00:10:07]Cuz like I learned it.

[00:10:10]I did. For fun. For fun even. It was an elective. I took Italian as an elective in college. But after that class was over, I got really busy and didn't like look at it again for a long time until today.

[00:10:24]I thought about it multiple times.

[00:10:25]>> Killing refrigerators and feminine washing machines, is that an appropriate joke? Unlike German, where guessing the gender of household appliances is nearly impossible, in Italian, it's highly pre- dictable. If it ends in o or e, it's masculine. If it ends in a or e, it's feminine. And if it's your finger, God forbid it's your finger.

[00:10:45]For feminine stuff, it's always la and le. For masculine nouns, the one you'll see more often is il and i. But if it starts with a consonant cluster, it becomes lo and gli. If a masculine or feminine singular noun just so happens to start on a vowel, it's reduced to apostrophe l. L'albero. L'amica.

[00:11:02]Ci and ne are particles. They're not pronouns. But they're the bane of my existence nonetheless. I used to mistake the particle ci for the pronoun ci because they sound identical and I didn't know any better as a beginner. Ci as a particle replaces a place you've already >> appreciate him um telling us the things that he did wrong when he was learning because it gives it gives someone who would be learning a place to start at and to understand it's like, "Oh, okay.

[00:11:26]No, this is something I can learn.

[00:11:29]This is a common foible, you know? I appreciate that."

[00:11:32]>> Cuz >> sound identical and I didn't know any better as a beginner. She is a particle replaces a place you've already mentioned so you don't sound like a broken record. For example, via Roma, si ci vado. It also replaces concepts attached to specific verbs that require a preposition. Credi ai fantasmi? No, non ci credo. If you're talking about quantities and you drop the noun, you must insert ne. You cannot just say I have two in Italian. You have to say I have two of them. And now for the most difficult part, it can mean about it or from it. It replaces the topic of conversation or a place you're currently leaving. Hai parlato del problema? Si, ne abbiamo parlato. Dante è ancora all'inferno? No, ne è uscito.

[00:12:13]>> I'm not going to be directly saying any of these things because I just don't want to. However, since these videos intend to expose you to as much of the language as possible, I will have to improvise. One of the most common expressions you're going to hear is Anubis. He's a god, he's a dog. Are you picking up what I'm putting down? And if you make him go from canine to swine, you have Italy's most popular expression of this category. Do not ever say any of these. For those of you who are linguistically inclined and looking to innovate, you can take any household object and combine it with Anubis to make unspeakable phrases that will likely upset your grandmother. And if you're looking for something a little bit less divine, and >> Love that.

[00:12:51]>> [laughter] >> I appreciate like again all of the little anime references. I love that I've gotten a lot of them.

[00:12:59]Quite a few. I know that polymerization thing is Yu-Gi-Oh.

[00:13:03]I got I've seen most of those bits from Dragon Ball.

[00:13:06]I got the free run one. Death Note, don't even come for me. I know most of these references.

[00:13:11]>> Italian, due to borrowing from the many peninsular languages and cultures, has many means by which to doubt your intelligence and a thousand other expressions like accusations of unknown lineage, the invocation of your deceased relatives, and lest we forget the humble aubergine, the feline of fertility and a >> I love this Then he's like, "Technically, the words are here. He's hiding them, though."

[00:13:31]>> series of verbs. While these are certainly more acceptable than our divinely inspired cohort, combined with the fact I've never met an Italian who hasn't dropped at least a few of them in casual conversation, I would advise against using them until you're fluent enough to actually be able to explain yourself if someone calls you out.

[00:13:45]>> Fair.

[00:13:45]>> The only reason why I ever got into linguistics was because I learned Italian one day, and Italians were like, "Whoa, bro, you're actually kind of good at this." And I was like, "Whoa, maybe I'm not a moron." So, big to the Italian people. And of course, I'd like to thank the viewer. This week >> Thank you. That's cool. So, he's learned Brazilian He's learned Brazilian Portuguese, which is very different.

[00:14:02]Well, it's not very different, but it's different than Portuguese Portuguese.

[00:14:05]And according to Alec, who if you watch the anime channel, you'll know Alec. Um but he is Brazilian. And he takes great pleasure in the little fun fact that the kids in Portugal are speaking Portuguese with more Brazilian accents these days because there's a lot of very, very famous Brazilian social media stars. And the kids are like emulating the Portuguese Brazilian accent as instead of the Portuguese Portuguese accent, and their parents are salty. So, that's a fun a fun thing that >> [laughter] >> that Alec will talk about often. And then now you know, too.

[00:14:44]When I was learning Italian, the only thing I really actively remember learning in Italian, I remember sempre dritto.

[00:14:51]Uh when we're talking about directions.

[00:14:53]Uh my Italian teacher was from the north. I'm not sure if like sempre dritto is straight.

[00:14:58]Tho- it cuz it just means always straight. Like it's like that was how She was like, "That's what people are going to tell you if you ask for directions." Um but when I was learning, the only thing I actively remember, the only unit I actively remember learning about was how to complain about your hotel room while you're on vacation.

[00:15:17]So.

[00:15:19]I remember that being cuz I remember finding it very funny.

[00:15:22]>> This video is a little bit shorter because full-time employment is literally destroying me. If you enjoyed it, you can like, comment, and subscribe to support the channel, and German is coming next.

[00:15:31]>> Dang, okay. So, he knows um a lot of languages then. Good for him.

[00:15:37]This guy, Plastic Heart, knows uh at least, you know, sp- I mean, he was he was talking about Spanish, German, Portuguese, or Brazilian Portuguese. I don't know if he knows um if he will talk too much about Portuguese Portuguese.

[00:15:52]This was cool. So, yeah. Thank you for that. That was fun. And like I said, I should probably get back into my Italian lessons at some point. I definitely have time for it. And I will see you in the next video.

[00:16:07]Bye.