If you’re a philologist or a nerd, it’s not the language of love. It’s the language of an unreasonable variety of articles and prepositions that you know you’ll never get quite right all of the time. It’s the language in which you hear the phrase “I’m going to visit my friend” reverberating from your mouth and only then remember that the verb visitare is used exclusively for going to the doctor’s office and what you are going to do is andare a trovare your friend. It’s the language whose numbers are just enough different from Spanish to give you trouble and you only remember cinquecento because Jeremy Clarkson makes fun of Fiat all the time on old Top Gear reruns on TV. It is the language that you insist, indignantly, to its native speakers that no, of course it’s not a difficult language — you speak Spanish anyway and have put in the time on Latin and Arabic — but silently admit to yourself that it’s not easy, either, and what did you need to go learn another diglossic language for, anyway? Dio là, as they say in Venetian, and definitely not in Standard Italian.