About this program

The Italian language is spoken by more than 70 million people residing all over the world. In this hemisphere, there are more than 10 million descendants of immigrants from Italy living in countries from Canada to Argentina, with the United States second only to Italy itself in number of Italian-speaking residents. In addition to studying the grammatical aspects of Italian, students learn about the culture, history and literature of Italy, a country that, for over 2,000 years, has been at the center of the artistic and cultural history of the western world.

Why study Italian at Ohio State?

The Italian program is relatively small and extremely friendly, which means that students develop relationships with their professors and instructors, to whom they turn for guidance and mentoring. Students also develop friendships with their classmates as they take courses and participate in extracurricular activities hosted by the Italian Club or the department, and study in Italy together. The courses in the major and minor are theme-based, which means that grammar, vocabulary and the four language skills (reading, writing, listening, reading) are refined while students learn about the history, art, languages and cultures of Italy.

What can you do with this degree? 

Mastery of Italian allows students to consider careers in such fields as education, government, interpreting and translating, international trade (in fashions, machinery, wine and foodstuffs, for example), print or electronic media, or tourism. Students from any major, from engineering to business or computer science, should consider a double major in Italian to benefit from the development of their abilities to work efficiently, proficiently and appropriately with people from different backgrounds and cultures.

Careers in which proficiency in Italian is a good secondary tool include banking and finance, business, sales, export purchasing, foreign market analysis, journalism, foreign correspondence, science and research, library science, hotel management, publishing, radio broadcasting, and teaching English in Italy to employees in corporations abroad.