Learn Italian - Discover Your Family Heritage
Many Italian Americans today are getting in touch with their family heritage by learning their ancestors' native language. Ultimately they are looking for ways to identify, understand, and bond with their family's ethnic background. Adult learners often use their new Italian language skills as a tool when they visit Italy to uncover their family's roots.For those seeking a closer familial bond, it can be a very touching and emotional experience walking through a small Sicilian town where their grandparents grew up, finding and reading their actual birth certificates, and conversing with their grandfather's cousins who they didn't know existed. Speaking and understanding Italian can make Italian Americans feel connected to their ancestors, even though they are no longer living.
There are lots of reasons to study a foreign language. Many Americans enroll in language courses to bond with other generations. A large percentage have also traveled to Italy recently for pleasure, often to visit their ancestors' homeland. One of the motivating factors for Italian American adults enrolling in a program for personal reasons is social enrichment, which often encompasses those studying their ethnic background language. The personal benefits of studying a foreign language are numerous, and learning Italian can be invaluable.
Over the past several years, with the aging of the baby boomer generation and an increase in free time, there has been a moderate increase in the number of students learning the Italian language for family-heritage reasons. Being able to read, speak and understand the Italian language remains a very powerful motivator for adults to learn the language. It gives people a connection to their past that many people yearn for.
Next page > Italian Genealogical Resources > Page 1, 2, 3
Newsletter
