Can I really learn Italian in the course of a summer?
The 13th century, saw writers like Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Petrarch and Boccaccio influence and popularise the Tuscan of Florence (la lingua fiorentina), as a standard literary language, that was their own Italian dialect. By the 14th century, the political and artistic circles of Italy were completely swept over by the Tuscan dialect, although until the sixteenth century Latin was still the primary literary language.
Italian is the language of music. It is also an extremely popular romance language.
If you are a native English speaker or speak any of the romance languages such as French, Spanish, Romanian, Portuguese, etc, then you most definitely can master Italian in the course of a summer. With that said, you cannot master the entire language. You have to set appropriate goals and decide the choice of fluency that you would like to master. For example, some people wish to achieve complete fluency in their speech. While others focus on achieving fluency in writing or maybe reading.
Hence the first step in trying to learn Italian within a single summer would be to prepare appropriate and sensible goals for yourself, along with deciding the right choice of fluency. Once you’re done with that, you can start to formulate an entire plan that would take over a course of about two months in order to master Italian. There are multiple ways in which you can reduce the time required to master the language. For example, if you wish to achieve fluency in speaking skills, then you can focus on watching Italian videos, Italian movies, listening to Italian music, listening to Italian podcasts or even conversing with Italian native speakers or other Italian students. On the other hand, if your focus is reading, then you should try collecting and expanding your resources.
Visit a nearby library and look for Italian literature of different eras and by different authors. You can also read other Italian literature like newspapers, brochures or even magazines. Basically, in order to achieve fluency in Reading, you must focus on reading all sorts of Italian literature to expand your vocabulary. Finally, if your focus or end goal is to achieve fluency in writing, then I suggest first mastering the grammar of the language, then the sentence formation of language and finally the vocabulary. You can try mimicking other literature written in Italian on your own. With all these steps, I definitely believe that you can master the language of music within a span of an entire summer, provided your aim is to achieve sensible goals.
Finally,
Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72) put together and published the first Italian grammar with the Latin title Regule lingue florentine in 1495. Latin and Italian both were utilised for writings in technology and science in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Italian used was rich with Latin terms, with the Italian becoming increasingly popular with Latin. The Tuscan dialect is today referred to as Italian (Italian) and is Italy’s official language. It is the primary literary and media language. Italy has a rich history to explore. Therefore I suggest loose no more time. Start learning Italian today.