How to get over my fear of speaking Italian?

Italiano or lingua Italiano is a Romantic language of the Indo-European language family that is known to be the language closely associated with Latin. It has evolved from vulgar Latin. When taking into consideration the national and the regional languages, Italian and Sardinian are the closest to Latin. Italian enjoys the prestige to be the official language of Italy, Switzerland (Ticino and the Graubünden), San Marinus and the City of the Vatican. It however exists in minority status in western Istria (Croatia and Slovenia).

To be very honest, to get over your fear of any language, in regards to any skills, you need to practise that skill. There are no two ways of mastering a skill or getting over the fear of using that skill in public, without actually practising or using that skill. For example, to improve your writing skills, you obviously have to practise writing. Or to improve your reading skills, you have to read all sorts of literature you can get your hands on. Similarly, to get over your fear of speaking skills as well as improve it, you need to speak Italian.

Usually, people focus on building their confidence while practising that skill, before using that skill in public. You can do the same with the speaking skills of Italian. There are multiple ways of practising your speaking skills at home and building your confidence at the same time. Once you are confident enough in your abilities you can try your luck at utilising the skill in public.  Firstly, it is important to understand what is the right pronunciation and grammar as well as sentence formation. For this, I suggest you listen to the natives who talk in Italian, very carefully. Take notes if necessary. You can also watch Italian movies with English subtitles or listen to Italian music or maybe an Italian podcast on a topic of your choice.

Either way, listening to the right pronunciation and usage of the speaking skills of the language is paramount. Once done, you can try mimicking them. This is the easiest way of practising this language. After a while of mimicking them, you are bound to get used to the grammar rules as well as the process of sentence formation. Secondly, expanding your vocabulary is equally important. This is extremely important because when you actually need to talk to people, you also need to know the right words to use in the right situation. In fact, you can practise your speaking skills while expanding your vocabulary. You can do so by reading different literature out loud. Therefore killing two birds with a stone. The final step is to hold a conversation with yourself in the mirror.

This is an exceptionally important step as you finally get to take a look at what you would sound and look like to others. Once all these steps are practised, you are bound to get over your fear of speaking Italian and eventually be able to converse with other Italian students or Italian speakers.

Corsican is generally classified as an Italian dialect so it’s understood well by the Corsican speakers. Alternatively Italian enjoyed the status of an official language in Corsica, Albania, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro (Kotor), Greece (the Ionian Islands and the Dodecanese) up until a few years back and in Italian East and Italian North Africa.