Why Study Italian?

Italy is one of the TOP ECONOMIES in the world.

Many employers are seeking people who speak both Italian and English. Thousands of American companies do business with Italy and have offices in Italy. Many Italian firms have offices in the U.S., especially in the Chicago area.

Italian is important in MANY CAREER FIELDS:

business, technology, art history, music, linguistics, education and international relations. Italy is a world leader in the culinary arts, machine tool manufacturing, interior and furniture design, graphic design, fashion, robotics, electromechanical machinery, space engineering, shipbuilding, construction machinery, transportation equipment and tourism industry. The majority of students of Italian combine their language specialization with a SECOND MAJOR to pursue careers in business, computer programming and web design, law, public relations, journalism, telecommunications, arts administration, publishing, library science, politics, public and environmental affairs, government employment, diplomacy, trade or the military. Students report that training in Italian significantly enhanced their professional and academic opportunities.

Italian is the fourth most spoken language most spoken in US homes,

according to the US Census Bureau. It is also spoken in Switzerland, parts of Africa, the Balkans, and the island of Malta.


are found in Italy, according to UNESCO.

Italian language allows access to ONE OF THE WEST'S RICHEST CULTURAL TRADITIONS

and most VITAL CONTEMPORARY SOCIETIES. Think of Roman civilization, humanism and Renaissance, opera, film, science, political thought, fashion, design, and cuisine.... Some of the most remarkable cultural works in the western canon were produced by Italians:, from the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri to Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, from The Prince of Niccolò Machiavelli to the neo-realist films of Vittorio De Sica, and from Baldassarre Castiglione's The Courtier to the post-modernist novels of Italo Calvino. In the Middle Ages cities such as Florence and Venice were among the most powerful of Europe; the Italian Renaissance has provided the foundations of much of western life and the movement for the Italian unification in the nineteenth century was one of the most exciting and inspiring ones.

Italian is also a SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE, of great advantage to those who study physical sciences and mathematics. Did you know that...

Guglielmo Marconi is the inventor of the wireless apparatus; Antonio Meucci is the true inventor of the telephone; Marcello Malpighi made many important anatomical discoveries; Renato Dulbecco won the Nobel prize for cancer research; Galileo investigated the laws of physics and astronomy; Evangelista Torricelli invented the barometer; Leonardo da Vinci was the father of geology; Tartaglia and Cardan discovered the solution of cubic equations; Enrico Fermi created the Fermiurn; Maria Montessori developed the Montessori System of Instruction.