|
 |
Modern Italian and Operatic Italian | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| breadboy Newbie United States Joined 7095 days ago 22 posts - 23 votes | Message 1 of 27 14 September 2005 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | ||
|
How different is the modern Italian Language from the Operas of Mozart, Verdi, and Puccini and how much of a struggle is it to understand Operetic Italian if you speak today's Italian? Edited by breadboy on 14 September 2005 at 11:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7380 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes  12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 27 15 September 2005 at 12:20am | IP Logged | ||
|
About as different as that used in Shakespeare plays versus the one spoken by George Bush.
I take it you mean operatic. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| breadboy Newbie United States Joined 7095 days ago 22 posts - 23 votes | Message 3 of 27 15 September 2005 at 8:36am | IP Logged | ||
|
Give me a little more though. Is this because of sentence structure, vocabulary, etc. How difficult is it to learn operatic italian if you already know standard italian
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7380 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 27 15 September 2005 at 10:17am | IP Logged | ||
|
Words are a bit different, many times the phrases are upside down, twisted unnaturally to make them sound nice and rhyme with each other. Many old words.
Now if you are looking for an extra incentive to learn Italian you will find it in Opera. Once you speak Italian you can definitely learn Arias and sing them (however well you manage to) with correct pronunciation and understanding each and every word. It is a great thing to do! There are various Opera karaoke system but I've never tried one so far. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| breadboy Newbie United States Joined 7095 days ago 22 posts - 23 votes | Message 5 of 27 15 September 2005 at 4:28pm | IP Logged | ||
|
The reason why shakespeare is so difficult for most english speakers to read is not only that he constructs sentences where the subject, object, and verb can go in any number of orders, but also that he made up thousands of his own words many of which are only used once. Those that he didn't make up are used in the context of a 400+ year-old England where many words have taken on entirely different meanings than they have today.
In contrast, Opera is a much more recient phenomenon with Mozart's operas dating back a little over 200 years with Verdi and Puccini both writing works well under 150 years ago. Opera can't be to modern italian what shakespeare is to modern english can it? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7380 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 27 15 September 2005 at 4:33pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Breadboy, I am trying to answer your questions here. If you have any more questions please let me know but if the point is to poke fun at a comparison I made in the hope of enlightening you as to the difference between the Italian used in Operas and the one spoken today, I have other things to do.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| breadboy Newbie United States Joined 7095 days ago 22 posts - 23 votes | Message 7 of 27 15 September 2005 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | ||
How did you get that out of what I said? I liked the shakespeare comparision and was simply doubting whether opera was that far and away different than modern italian. I suspect that things arn't quite that bad (which is why I said the former) which is why I asked another question. There is no joke here, I simply want to know how difficult it is going to be for me to pick up opera after learning modern italian. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6707 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 27 24 August 2006 at 8:38am | IP Logged | ||
Well almost, - opera was invented by Italian composers around 1600 (after Shakespeare, but not that much), with Monteverdi as the first big name whose works are still performed today. As for the use of opera in language learning, - if you can stand the sound of opera singing (I can't), then it certainly will be an incentive. But with all the concessions to the use of language for singing it becomes a somewhat artificial language. You wouldn't expect the words of a modern popsong to be be organized in the same way as an article in Corriere de la Sera, and it is the same with opera librettos. Edited by Iversen on 24 August 2006 at 8:39am 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
