Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
THE LOCAL LIST

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

The world’s top ten unis to study Italian

The Local takes a look at the world’s leading universities offering Italian degrees, everywhere from California to Melbourne.

Published: 5 September 2014 16:00 CEST
The world's top ten unis to study Italian
The University of Cambridge in the UK offers an Italian degree. Photo: llee_wu

If you are passionate about pursuing a degree in Italian, there are a number of top universities around the world that are famous for providing excellent courses for their students.

Italian is spoken by over 60 million people, from Italy to East Africa and South America. But as The Local found out, the top ten universities that offer Italian degrees are all in English-speaking countries.

The best three universities that offer an Italian-only degree are in the US and the UK, while universities in Canada and Australia also feature in the top ten, based on Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings for arts and humanities.

California’s Stanford University, ranking at number one, offers the chance to learn Italian through intensive language courses and provides its students with a deeper understanding of Italy through the study of its literature, culture, traditions and history.

The university offers an excellent Italian degree and the possibility of studying in Italy through the Stanford in Florence programme.

The three-year degree focuses on providing a complete learning experience of Italian, from its grammar to its immediate oral communication, cultural studies and academic and creative writing.

By the end of the programme, not only will you be able to understand Italian and Italian culture, but you will have done so in one of the top universities in the world.

Stanford Uni by Waqas Mustafeez

Stanford University, California. Photo: Waqas Mustafeez

The second best university for arts and humanities is Harvard University. The famous university is located in Boston, which is home to many Italian-Americans and was one of the main destinations of the Italian immigration flows.

Harvard University’s Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, among other programmes such as French and Francophone or Hispanic studies, offers a course in Italian Studies.

By the end of the programme students will have gained an excellent level in Italian and knowledge of the major periods of Italian literature, ranging from Dante and his Divine Comedy to current Italian theatre and film.

Harvard University’s programme will also integrate studies about the culture and literature of Italian-speaking communities around the world, as well as those of the main immigrant populations within Italy. In addition, the course gives its students the chance of studying abroad and experience of Italy’s most famous cities, Venice.

Harvard by Shutterstock

Harvard University, Boston. Photo: Shutterstock

Finally, another great location and prestigious university that offers an Italian degree is the UK's University of Cambridge.

Cambridge is famous for offering the best courses and teachers and, unsurprisingly, it is listed as the third top university for arts and humanities.

The university’s Italian degree programme lasts four years, during which students will not only achieve a complete knowledge of the Italian language, but they will also engage in discussions about autobiography and self-representation in Italian literature and modern culture.

Unlike Stanford and Harvard, Cambridge makes it compulsory to spend the third year of the programme in Italy. This provides every student with the chance to enrich their vocabulary as well as experiencing the Italian way of life.

IN PICTURES: The world’s best universities to study Italian 

By Tiziana Buscemi

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Le Havre rules: How to talk about French towns beginning with Le, La or Les

If you're into car racing, French politics or visits to seaside resorts you are likely at some point to need to talk about French towns with a 'Le' in the title. But how you talk about these places involves a slightly unexpected French grammar rule. Here's how it works.

Published: 30 November 2021 13:04 CET
Updated: 4 December 2021 17:47 CET
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre.
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre. It can be difficult to know what prepositions to use for places like this - so we have explained it for you. (Photo by AFP)

If you’re listening to French chat about any of those topics, at some point you’re likely to hear the names of Mans, Havre and Touquet bandied about.

And this is because French towns that have a ‘Le’ ‘La’ or ‘Les’ in the title lose them when you begin constructing sentences. 

As a general rule, French town, commune and city names do not carry a gender. 

So if you wanted to describe Paris as beautiful, you could write: Paris est belle or Paris est beau. It doesn’t matter what adjectival agreement you use. 

For most towns and cities, you would use à to evoke movement to the place or explain that you are already there, and de to explain that you come from/are coming from that location:

Je vais à Marseille – I am going to Marseille

Je suis à Marseille – I am in Marseille 

Je viens de Marseille – I come from Marseille 

But a select few settlements in France do carry a ‘Le’, a ‘La’ or a ‘Les’ as part of their name. 

In this case the preposition disappears when you begin formulating most sentences, and you structure the sentence as you would any other phrase with a ‘le’, ‘la’ or ‘les’ in it.

Masculine

Le is the most common preposition for two names (probably something to do with the patriarchy) with Le Havre, La Mans, Le Touquet and the town of Le Tampon on the French overseas territory of La Réunion (more on that later)

A good example of this is Le Havre, a city in northern France where former Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, who is tipped to one day run for the French presidency, serves as mayor. 

Edouard Philippe’s twitter profile describes him as the ‘Maire du Havre’, using a masculine preposition

Here we can see that his location is Le Havre, and his Twitter handle is Philippe_LH (for Le Havre) but when he comes to describe his job the Le disappears.

Because Le Havre is masculine, he describes himself as the Maire du Havre rather than the Maire de Havre (Anne Hidalgo, for example would describe herself as the Maire de Paris). 

For place names with ‘Le’ in front of them, you should use prepositions like this:

Ja vais au Touquet – I am going to Le Touquet

Je suis au Touquet – I am in Le Touquet 

Je viens du Touquet – I am from Le Touquet 

Je parle du Touquet – I am talking about Le Touquet

Le Traité du Touquet – the Le Touquet Treaty

Feminine

Some towns carry ‘La’ as part of their name. La Rochelle, the scenic town on the west coast of France known for its great seafood and rugby team, is one such example.

In French ‘à la‘ or ‘de la‘ is allowed, while ‘à le‘ becomes au and ‘de le’ becomes du. So for ‘feminine’ towns such as this, you should use the following prepositions:

Je vais à La Rochelle – I am going to La Rochelle

Je viens de La Rochelle – I am coming from La Rochelle 

Plural

And some places have ‘Les’ in front of their name, like Les Lilas, a commune in the suburbs of Paris. The name of this commune literally translates as ‘The Lilacs’ and was made famous by Serge Gainsbourg’s song Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, about a ticket puncher at the Metro station there. 

When talking about a place with ‘Les’ as part of the name, you must use a plural preposition like so:

Je suis le poinçonneur des Lilas – I am the ticket puncher of Lilas 

Je vais aux Lilas – I am going to Les Lilas

Il est né aux Lilas – He was born in Les Lilas  

Islands 

Islands follow more complicated rules. 

If you are talking about going to one island in particular, you would use à or en. This has nothing to do with gender and is entirely randomised. For example:

Je vais à La Réunion – I am going to La Réunion 

Je vais en Corse – I am going to Corsica 

Generally speaking, when talking about one of the en islands, you would use the following structure to suggest movement from the place: 

Je viens de Corse – I am coming from Corsica 

For the à Islands, you would say:

Je viens de La Réunion – I am coming from La Réunion 

When talking about territories composed of multiple islands, you should use aux.

Je vais aux Maldives – I am going to the Maldives. 

No preposition needed 

There are some phrases in French which don’t require any a preposition at all. This doesn’t change when dealing with ‘Le’ places, such as Le Mans – which is famous for its car-racing track and Motorcycle Grand Prix. Phrases that don’t need a preposition include: 

Je visite Le Mans – I am visiting Le Mans

J’aime Le Mans – I like Le Mans

But for a preposition phrase, the town becomes simply Mans, as in Je vais au Mans.

SHOW COMMENTS