You say tomayto, I say tomatho…. let’s call the whole thing off ! As Fred Astaire once said, its sometimes not worth it to try. That’s how I feel at times about trying to learn Italian. I really should try but in actuality, its not just Italian I (or you ) would have to learn, its regional dialects as well.
In an article today in the NY Times, “You Say Anguria, I say Cocomero,” the same issue is revisited. I talked about Italian dialects in this article…
https://resurrectionofthescrolls.com/2016/08/23/choosing-an-italian-translator/
When learning Italian it’s important to keep in mind that a watermelon may be called an anguria in one region and a cocomero in another.
Why so many different words for the same fruit? Because in their daily lives, many Italians don’t speak Italian. Italians who don’t speak Italian? Impossible you say! No, its the truth. Many older Italians (50+) might only know their regional dialect.
That is, they don’t shop or chat or argue in standard Italian, the kind that is studied in school and heard on the news. They use one of the country’s hundreds of local dialects, each with its own quirks of pronunciation, inflection and vocabulary.
So before you spend hundreds of dollars on language courses and countless hours studying, you might also want to incorporate regional dialects into your learning plan. Otherwise, you might be speaking two different languages in Italy anyway.
To read more… http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/world/what-in-the-world/italy-dialects.html?_r=0
If you like the photo you can get it on a t-shirt here – http://www.damptshirts.com/t/shirt/1014/you-say-tomato-i-say-lycopersicon-esculentum/
Resurrection Of The Scrolls 