Learning Italian — frequently asked questions
25 questions people really ask when learning Italian, with answers that stand on their own. Where there is more to say, the link comes underneath — not instead of the answer.
Getting started
Where to begin, how long it takes, what the levels mean, and what the languages you already know are worth.
How do I start learning Italian?
With four things side by side rather than one after another: the two auxiliary verbs essere and avere, the three sets of present-tense endings, a first stock of everyday words learnt together with their article, and saying whole sentences out loud. The endings deserve the early attention because English gives no warning of them: an Italian verb changes for every person — parlo, parli, parla, parliamo, parlate, parlano — where an ordinary English verb changes once, in « speaks ». Until those endings come without thinking, every sentence has to be assembled by hand. The auxiliaries matter just as early, because the everyday past tense is built with one of them, and choosing the wrong one is audible from the first sentence about yesterday.
Is Italian hard for an English speaker?
Easier at the start than most people expect, and harder in the middle. The start is easy for two reasons. Much of the vocabulary is recognisable, because English took a large share of its longer words from Latin and French: importante, possibile, la situazione. And the spelling is regular — once the rules are learnt, a written word can be read aloud correctly, which is not something English has trained you to expect. The middle is harder because three things arrive that modern English does not have at all: a gender on every noun, with articles and adjectives agreeing with it; an ending on every verb for every person; and a choice of auxiliary in the past. With none of them is there an English habit to adapt; each one is built from nothing.
What do A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2 mean?
They are the six steps of a European scale, from first sentences (A1) to effortless command of the language (C2). The labels are free for anyone to use; the official wording that describes each step is protected by copyright, and this site deliberately does not reproduce it. What you find here instead is its own sorting of the material, with the yardstick stated openly: the question is not how difficult a word is, but from what point you cannot get by without it. Il frigorifero is a long word and sits at A1, because every kitchen has one; negare, « to deny », is short and sits at B2, because you can go a long way without needing it.
How long does it take to learn Italian?
There is no honest figure in hours, and a page that states one as a fact has made it up: it depends on what « speaking » is meant to cover, on what you already know and on how often you practise. What can be said is where the stages lie. Ordering a coffee and asking the way comes quickly. A conversation that does not sound like a phrasebook needs the past tenses, the object pronouns and a vocabulary that has grown well beyond the everyday, and that takes many months of regular work rather than weeks. Reading a newspaper without a dictionary takes longer again. Short sessions on most days tend to do more than long ones now and then, because what is recalled after a gap is what stays.
I learnt French or Spanish at school — does that help?
Yes, a good deal, and it gets in the way at a few predictable points. It helps because the grammar is built from the same parts: nouns with a gender, verbs with an ending for each person, a subjunctive, and the difference between a past that sets the scene and a past that tells what happened. French helps with the past tense in particular: verbs of movement and reflexive verbs take « être » there just as they take essere here, and the participle agrees in the same way — Italian simply extends the list further. It gets in the way through words that look shared and are not: Spanish « burro » is a donkey, Italian burro is butter. Both French and Spanish make plurals with -s, and Italian does not: i libri, never « i libros ». And for a while the languages will mix in mid-sentence; that is normal and fades with use.
Grammar
The distinctions on which Italian most often catches out an English speaker.
When do I use essere and when avere in the past?
The short rule: essere with verbs of movement and of change of state, and with every reflexive verb; avere with everything else. Sono andato, sono arrivata, è nato — but ho mangiato, ho letto, ho dormito. Modern English uses « have » for everything, but older English did what Italian does: « the hour is come », « he is risen ». The part that has no English model is the consequence. With essere the participle agrees with the subject, so a woman says sono andata and a group siamo andati. With avere it normally stays as it is.
What is the difference between the passato prossimo and the imperfetto?
Not how long something lasted, but whether it sets the scene or happens within it. The imperfetto paints the background: what things were like, what used to happen, what was going on. The passato prossimo puts the events into it. Pioveva e sono uscito — it was raining (the scene), and I went out (the event). English marks part of this with « was doing » and « used to », which are both imperfetto. The trouble is the plain « went », which can be either: « every summer we went to the sea » is a habit and takes andavamo; « last summer we went to the sea » is an event and takes siamo andati. And one English rule has to be switched off: a past time word does not rule out the compound form. Ieri ho mangiato is the normal way to say « I ate yesterday ».
Do I really need the congiuntivo?
Yes, after a particular kind of main clause, and only there. English has kept scraps of a subjunctive — « if I were you », « I insist that he be there » — and Italian uses a full one where English uses none. It follows che after words of wanting, doubting, fearing and thinking: voglio che tu venga, penso che sia vero, and after certain conjunctions such as benché: benché sia tardi. It is not a politeness form and not a way of sounding educated. In relaxed speech many Italians replace it with the indicative after verbs of opinion; in writing it is expected. Leave it out and you will be understood; put it in the right place and you will sound like someone who has learnt the language properly.
Why is it mi piace and not io piaccio?
Because piacere does not mean « to like » but « to please », in the sense English keeps in « if you please ». The thing that pleases is the subject, and the person is the indirect object: mi piace il libro is « the book pleases me ». From that follows the trap: with a plural it is the verb that changes, not the person. Mi piacciono i libri. And io piaccio does exist — it means « I please », so ti piaccio? is « do you like me? ». In the past it takes essere: mi è piaciuto il film.
Why does Italian have so many words for « the »?
Because the article agrees with the gender and number of the noun, and on top of that adapts to the sound that follows it. Masculine singular is il, but lo before s plus a consonant, z, gn and ps, and l’ before a vowel. In the plural those become i and gli. The feminine is simpler: la, l’, le. Seven forms in all, where English has one. The sound rule is less foreign than it looks: English already says « a book » but « an apple », so that the mouth does not stumble, and lo studente exists for the same reason — il studente would jam three consonants together.
When do I say tu and when Lei?
English gave up this choice centuries ago, when « thou » fell out of use, so there is no instinct to rely on and it has to be learnt as a fact. Tu is for friends, family, children, and people of your own age in any relaxed setting — a wider circle than most learners first assume. Lei is for strangers, for shops and offices, and for people noticeably older. It is the same word as « she » and takes the verb of the third person: Lei parla inglese? The switch can be offered out loud, diamoci del tu?, and the two mistakes are not equal: too much tu too soon sounds pushy, while staying with Lei too long only sounds formal.
What do ne and ci mean?
Both stand in for something already mentioned, and they stand in for different things. Ne means roughly « of it » or « of them », and is needed whenever a quantity is given: Quante mele vuoi? Ne voglio due. English can answer « I want two » and leave the rest unsaid; Italian cannot. Ci means « there », or stands for a plus something: Vai a Roma? Sì, ci vado. English speakers drop both, because English lets them. One of them you already know: c’è and ci sono are « there is » and « there are », with the same « there » in them.
Do I have to say io, tu, lui?
No, and usually you should not. The verb ending already says who is meant: parlo can only be « I speak ». English cannot do without a subject, even an empty one — « it is raining » — while Italian simply says piove. So io parlo is not wrong, but it is emphatic: « I speak — as opposed to him ». An English speaker who puts the pronoun in everywhere stresses half their sentences without meaning to. It belongs where there is a contrast, where something is being insisted on, and where the form alone is ambiguous — in the present congiuntivo, for instance, three persons share one form.
Vocabulary
Which words come first, which familiar-looking ones mislead, and how to tell a masculine noun from a feminine one.
How many Italian words do I need?
There is no single number worth quoting, because it depends on what you want to do — and the number matters less than the order. A small set of very frequent words makes up most of any ordinary text, while each of the rarer words turns up almost never. So a verb you need every day is worth more than a dozen nouns you might need once. For an English speaker there is a second point: many long Italian words are close to English ones — la stazione, importante, l’università — and cost little to learn. The short, frequent ones are the work: già, ancora, anche, però.
Which Italian words look like English ones and mean something else?
La camera is a room; a camera is a macchina fotografica. I parenti are relatives; parents are i genitori. La libreria is a bookshop; a library is a biblioteca. Attualmente means « currently », not « actually », and eventualmente means « if need be », not « eventually ». Sensibile is « sensitive », and la fattoria is a farm, not a factory. These words are more dangerous than unfamiliar ones, because nobody looks up a word they think they already know.
What is the difference between buono and bravo?
Buono is good in quality or in nature: good food, a kind person. Bravo is good at something — skilled, capable: un bravo meccanico knows his trade, and sei bravissima a cucinare means « you are a wonderful cook ». Said to a child, it means « good » in the sense of well-behaved. English knows « bravo » only as applause, so English speakers use it too rarely; in Italian it is an everyday word. The adverb is a separate word again, bene: sto bene, cucina bene — the same split as « good » and « well », which English already makes.
How can I tell whether an Italian noun is masculine or feminine?
Mostly from the ending. A noun in -o is almost always masculine, one in -a almost always feminine, and nouns in -e can be either and have to be learnt: il fiore, la chiave. The exceptions are few and frequent. Words from Greek in -ma are masculine: il problema, il tema, il sistema. La mano is feminine despite its ending, and so are la foto and la moto, which are short for fotografia and motocicletta and have kept the gender of the long word. English gives things no gender, so the habit worth forming from day one is to learn every noun with its article: not « chiave », but la chiave.
Pronunciation and regions
Which Italian you are learning, and the sounds English spelling does not prepare you for.
Which Italian will I learn here?
Standard Italian — the language of schools, newspapers and national television, which grew historically out of the Tuscan of Florence. That is not a judgement on anyone’s speech: it is the version understood everywhere and the one every text is written in. Accents differ from region to region, as they do in English, and all of them are Italian. What this site does not teach are the regional languages — Neapolitan, Sicilian, Venetian and the rest. Italians call them dialetti, but they are not regional accents of Italian: they descend from Latin alongside it, each with its own history. One difference within standard Italian itself is regional too: the passato remoto is used in everyday speech in parts of the south and hardly at all in the north.
How do I pronounce ce, ci, che and chi?
One rule covers both c and g: before e and i they are soft, everywhere else hard. Cena begins like « church », casa like « car »; gelato begins like « gem », gatto like « gap ». An h switches the soft sound back to hard: che sounds like « kay » without the glide, chi like « key », spaghetti has a hard g. The other way round, an i slipped in makes a hard letter soft and is not pronounced itself: ciao sounds like « chow ». The trap for English speakers is that Italian « ch » is always a k — bruschetta is « brus-ket-ta », and chiesa, « church », begins with a k.
Do the double consonants really matter?
Yes. They are the one point of Italian pronunciation where a slip turns one word into another. Nono is « ninth », nonno is « grandfather ». Casa is a house, cassa a till. Pena is a penalty, penna a pen, and sete is thirst while sette is seven. English writes double letters but does not say them: the difference between « dinner » and « diner » is in the vowel, not in the n. Italian holds the consonant for longer, and that length is audible. English does have the sound, only across the join of two words: the k in « bookcase » and the n in « unnamed » are Italian double consonants.
Where does the stress fall, and what do the accents mean?
Most often on the second-to-last syllable: parlare, amico, ragazza. But not always, and the writing does not warn you: telefono and macchina are stressed on the third syllable from the end, and so are the plural present forms like parlano — « PAR-la-no », a word English speakers reliably get wrong. A written accent appears only when the stress falls on the final vowel: città, caffè, perché, lunedì. It also tells apart words that would otherwise look the same: e is « and », è is « is ». Leaving it off is not a matter of style; it produces a different word.
This site
What it costs, what it stores, and what it is not.
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Does this site store my data?
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