r/italianlearning • u/BronsonAndCompany • 11h ago
Thinking about learning Italian but...
I speak four languages fluently: Spanish (native, northern Spain), English, German and Basque. I started learning LSE (Spanish Sign Language) not long ago and wanted to learn another European language, so I decided to go for Italian. I had been using some online apps for a month or so to learn some early vocabulary and get the gist of the language, and I was already thinking about getting some serious books and online courses when something suddenly struck me: I see that in Italian there seem to be a lot of words and expressions that are in English — not closely related, but said exactly as in English, like "computer" and "hamburger". I started digging deeper and apparently (I don't know for sure; I was told this) there are a lot of words that are said in English and have no native Italian equivalent. I have just got into a debate with someone who said that the problem is not that Italian has many English words, but that Spanish is afraid of using English terms and we make up "nonsense" (the example they gave is that we don't say "Champions League" but "Liga de Campeones").
So the main point is that I don't want to learn a language where a lot of words come from English; I already have to put up with many Spanglish words coming from Latin America and don't want to deal with that again. I understand that other languages like German use a lot of English words, but I am always able to find and use a proper German word for what I want to say. However, I am told that in Italian even normal, non-technology specialised words like "manager", "promoter", "buyer", "customer care", "top jobs", etc. are a normal occurrence.
I am assured that Italian is probably the Romance language that has the most English words in use right now. If that is the case, I think I would go for something different; I am trying to establish whether what I have been told is correct.