Scratch

How about trying Google Translate?

Last edited by JJROCKER (2011-12-17 01:16:25)

I'd suggest Google Translate. It's probably the most well known translator, and it's really easy to use! It's not always entirely accurate though, and here's a real thing that happened to my friend to prove it:

He realised he hadn't done his French homework about what chores he does, so he quickly went to the library to do it the computers. He went on Google Translate, and typed it all in. One of the things he wrote was 'I wash my mum and dad's car'. When the French teacher read it, however, it turned out it had translated wrong and it now read 'I wash my mum and dad in the car'!

So for small stuff, it's great, but it's best not to rely on it all the time! 

Garr8 wrote:

thx! I know some spanish, and italian is similar to spanish, so it shouldnt be hard, i also know a fair bit about linguistics.

HA!! Good one. “Shouldn’t be hard”. It’s a different language! It’s going to be hard

Well, learning it is an option, but takes time. Online translators mistake in the unknown epic street possible, yet still being a not fabled fail. Yes, that's what their sentences will look like to people in other languages. The best way is to get a friend who speaks both languages and have him translate. I'm learning Italian myself, but still need a lot of work on it.

German and Italian are harder to learn than common languages like Spanish or French, I think, because it is less similar and there are less teachers. Same with Romanian and Portuguese (although that is really similar to Spanish).

henley wrote:

RedRocker227 wrote:

henley wrote:

HA!! Good one. “Shouldn’t be hard”. It’s a different language! It’s going to be hard

Not necessarily. Spanish, Italian, English, French, German and others all originated from Latin, so they're all fairly similar. I reckon 20% percent of the time you'll be able to tell what a foreign word means because it sounds really similar.

Although most of this is true, I wouldn’t say 20%. There are a lot of words out there. I would only say 20% if you knew Latin and English.

@RedRocker227 True. I know a bit of Spanish, a bit of German, a LOT of English  , and most of the Italian I know is musical terms that I see when playing music (crescendo, diminuendo, forte, pianissimo, dolce, presto, etc.). These languages are all Latin derived, so there are some similarities between all of them.

Also, Spanish and Italian are very similar with probably just a few spelling/word differences, so if you know Spanish you can get a general idea of what the Italian speaker is saying.

@henley Yes, there are spelling differences, but you don't have to know Latin. Or maybe it's just easy for me because every day I have to play music and read musical terms in foreign languages?

(off topic: @henley you actually put Paddle2See's comment on that closed Misc. Topic about you being from an "alternate dimension" in your sig!?  )

Last edited by a1130 (2011-12-19 12:17:34)

a1130 wrote:

@henley you actually put Paddle2See's comment on that closed Misc. Topic about you being from an "alternate dimension" in your sig!?

It was hilarious and worth it.

Although, I’m going to change it to something even more hilarious.

Whoever said that Italian is harder to learn because it is less similar and there are less teachers, wrong.

Italian is less popular than Spanish because Spanish is spoken a lot more in the U.S., South America and all Spanish colonies. That doesn't mean there are less teachers available! 

Italian is extremely similar to Spanish, and French. Italian is the language derived from Latin.

On topic, if you know linguistics and you're fluent in Spanish, you won't struggle at all. The two are very similar, but there are regular changes to the words, such as adding E or DE to the beginning of SP/ST words (to be: "stare" in Italian and "estar" in Spanish), or the endings of nouns (animaZIONE becomes animaCIÓN, aZIONE becomes aCCIÓN).

Good luck!

mcpNOVA wrote:

Just use Google Translate, copy what they say and paste it into Google Translate. Make sure what your translating is Italian and what your translating it to is English. Then, you should be able to understand what they said. Hope this helped. 

I’m pretty sure we covered already that Google Translate works. 

Try to make your posts different, as in less repetitive.