What is the word language in italian

Italian
Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland (Ticino and the Grisons), San Marino, and Vatican City.

Is Spanish and Italian language the same?

Spanish and Italian are mutually intelligible to various degrees. They both come from “Vulgar Latin,” that’s why they have so much in common. Italian and Spanish share 82% lexical similarity. In Spanish, the word “jardín” and, in Italian word “Giardino” means “place.”

What language is a mix of Spanish and Italian?

Cocoliche
Cocoliche is an Italian–Spanish mixed language or pidgin that was spoken by Italian immigrants in Argentina (especially in Greater Buenos Aires) and Uruguay between 1870 and 1970. In the last decades of the 20th century, it was replaced with or evolved into Lunfardo, which in turn has influenced Rioplatense Spanish.

Can a Spanish person understand Italian?

Italian is a great complement to Spanish, French and Latin. Often times, even without any previous formal training, Spanish speakers are able to understand a lot of Italian (and Portuguese, for that matter), mostly in their written, but often also in their spoken forms.

Which language came first, Spanish or Italian?

Spanish came first. The Spanish language is really Vulgate Latin , spoken by the lower classes in Rome as far back as the days of Cicero and Julius Caesar.

Is Italian similar to Spanish?

Italian is very similar to Spanish in some ways. But, after all is said and done, it is still a foreign language. They have different spelling rules, phonemes, and vocabulary. On a positive note, they have nearly identical grammar rules, as far as nouns having gender and agreement with adjectives, but the word endings are different (more complex).

What are the similarities between Italian and Spanish?

Spanish and Italian share a very similar phonological system and do not differ very much in grammar. At present, the lexical similarity with Italian is estimated at 82%. As a result, Spanish and Italian are mutually intelligible to various degrees.

How similar are Spanish and Italian languages?

The lexical similarity between Spanish and Italian is over 80%. That means that 4/5 of the two languages’ words are similar but does not mean that they are necessarily mutually intelligible to native speakers due to additional differences in pronunciation and syntax.

Why learn the 1000 most common Italian words?

Are you trying to learn Italian?

The best way to get started is to memorize the 1000 most common Italian words.

Many language experts will point out that focusing on the basic vocabulary in any language is the best investment for your time.

You will rarely use complicated or trivial words in your daily life when speaking with friends, colleagues, or family members.

So why not focus on getting familiar with only the words you know you’ll use?

With the basic words, you can make simple phrases for your first Italian  conversation or your next trip to Italy!

With basic Italian words, you’ll start forming sentences in Italian and ultimately have flowing Italian conversations.

Learn how to form sentences in Italian.

How much can you say with 1,000 words?

How much can you understand with the top 1000 most common Italian words?

A study revealed how much you can understand with 1000, 2000, or 3000 words.

Studying the first 1000 most commonly used Italian words in the language will familiarize you with:

• 76.0% of all vocabulary in non-fiction literature
• 79.6% of all vocabulary in fiction literature
• 87.8% of vocabulary in oral speech

Studying the 2000 most commonly Italian used words will familiarize you with:

• 84% of vocabulary in non-fiction
• 86.1% of vocabulary in fictional literature
• 92.7% of vocabulary in oral speech

And studying the 3000 most commonly Italian used words will familiarize you with:

• 88.2% of vocabulary in non-fiction
• 89.6% of vocabulary in fiction
• 94.0% of vocabulary in oral speech

If you’re an ambitious language learner, you can certainly learn 3,000 of the most common words for 94% comprehension.

However, for most of us, we want to optimize for what’s the best return for our time.

Based on this study, it seems that 1,000 most common words are the best bet.

The reason is, you have to memorize 3x (or 2,000 more words) to be able to understand only 6.2% of vocabulary in oral speech.

It doesn’t seem very exciting considering how valuable your time is.

In fact, we’ve seen that most Italian learners can get to a comfortable conversation speaking level with less than 1,000 Italian words.

If you listen to Italian music to learn this beautiful language and improve your Italian pronunciation, choose the right Italian songs because some lyrics aren’t exactly what you’d say in real life.

The same applies to Italian idioms, Italian sayings, verbal phrases, Italian proverbs, Italian quotes, or even Italian swear words.

Frequent Italian words: facts and figures

The Italian language is estimated to be made out of a total of 450000 words with the largest Italian dictionary having over 270000 words.

This can seem a really big and frightening number to someone wanting to start learning Italian, but here’s the good news: you only need to know roughly 5% of the total words to be fluent in Italian.

This means that focusing your efforts on learning the most frequent Italian words you will be fluent in Italian in no time.

What’s even more encouraging is that knowing as little as 100 words helps you understand half of the words in an article or book written in Italian.

Learn the most common 1000 words and you get to a 75% understanding of texts in Italian.

Also, each new word you learn helps you guess the Italian meaning of up to 135 words you have never seen before.

This means that knowing only 1000 words helps you guess up to 135000 Italian words.

Doesn’t seem that frightening now, right?

The problem with lists of common Italian words

Now that you know what you can do with 1000 words in the Italian language, the question is: how to learn these basic Italian words?

Many people make flashcards with word lists.

These word lists are usually generated from a huge multi-billion sample of language called a corpus which ensures all topics and text types are covered and the word list reflects how words are used by real users.

On the internet, you can find quite a few lists of the most 1000 common Italian words like this, this, and this.

Some of these lists of 100, 500, 1000, and 2000 basic Italian words are available for free in PDF or CSV format.

However, many are not very useful because they include “function words” like “for, but, when”.

For example, here are the top 50 words from one of those lists:

non che di e la il un a è per in una sono mi ho si lo ma ti ha le cosa con i no da se come io ci questo qui hai bene sei tu del me mio al solo sì tutto te più della era c lei gli

Does that help? No.

Even though these words are frequent and useful, they don’t make any sense per se and need a context to be practiced and mastered.

Another reason for not using them is how different forms of the same word are counted.

Some wordlists are not lemmatized.

This means that different forms of the same words are not counted together, i.e. goes, went, gone, going and go. This is generally more practical.

Ironically, one of the largest lists of Italian words is made from movie subtitles, which are often a translation of foreign movie scripts. Often, they’re not even professionally translated.

So, they don’t reflect the way an Italian speaker really talk.

In other words, the top 1000 Italian words are not the same for everyone.

The 1000 most used Italian words depend on who uses them, and on their purpose.

Do you want to chat with friends with natural Italian phrases? Travel? Or watch the news in Italian? These situations require a different vocabulary.

The best list of common Italian words

This is what you were looking for: the best list of common Italian words.

The smartest word list for the Italian language I’ve found so far is this.

It’s divided into:

• Italian nouns
• Italian adjectives
• Italian verbs
• Italian function words like and adverbs, prepositions, articles

Judging from the words, I guess they were taken from newspaper articles.

The picture below is a preview. As you can see, the words are arranged according to parts of speech.

Feel free to download it and edit it as you wish.

However, this list lacks a translation.

For my translation, keep reading!

Top 1000 common Italian words with English translation

The list of common Italian words I recommend doesn’t come with an English translation, so I translated the words for you.

Open the spreadsheet below to see the list of the top 1000 most frequent Italian words with English translation:

1. Italian nouns make the longest list
2. Then come Italian adjectives with translation
3. Italian verbs with English translation in the infinitive form
4. Other Italian words include adverbs, prepositions, and adjectives

You may also download the file to edit it as you wish.

To download it in a printable PDF format, just tell me where I should send it.

You’ll receive it immediately!

If you create a free account, you’ll also get other freebies for members. 100% free!

Just tell me where I should send it.

What are the most common words used in Italian?

Let’s start with some of the most common Italian words used in this popular language:

cosa
thing
giorno
day
anno
year
uomo
man
donna
woman
volta (as in “many times”)
time
casa
home
vita
life
tempo
time and weather
mano
hand
ora
now
paese
country, town
momento
moment
parola
word
famiglia
family
padre
father
madre
mother
figlio, figlia
son, daughter
amico
friend
lavoro
work
strada
street
nome
name
acqua
water
gente
people
persona
person
amore
love
mare
sea

What are the 100 most common words in Italian?

Even from a list of 1000 words, it still makes sense to start memorizing the 100 most common Italian words.
That’s your foundation to start forming an Italian phrase and ultimately have flowing conversations.
Indeed, you will rarely use complicated words in your daily conversations with friends, colleagues, or family members.
You find the 100 most common Italian words on the top of the list.
Once you’re done with them, you can move on to the other 900 words.
While apps like Quizlet and Anki are popular choices, I still recommend learning these words by putting them in context, for example in conversations with native speakers.

Learn more about Italian words.

What is the most popular Italian word?

You only need to look at the top of this list of the 1000 most used Italian words.
According to the list above, the most popular Italian word is a noun: cosa.
The word cosa in Italian gets so many colours and flavours according to the context.
Let’s see a few examples:

E’ la cosa piu’ bella che abbia mai visto.
It’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

In this sentence, cosa doesn’t get any specific meaning besides the generic ”thing” we’re referring to.

Cosa mangiamo stasera?
What do we eat tonight?

In this sentence cosa is actually used to refer to something which, in this specific context, can be replaced with “food”.
We give for granted that we’re talking of food because of the type of question we do.
This would already be enough to make it to the top 1000.

Ti ricordi quella cosa che avevi visto tempo fa? L’ho vista anch’io ora!
Do you remember that thing you saw a while ago? I’ve just seen it now!

Again, the use of cosa, in this context, is referred to as a generic “thing” that could be potentially anything (A star? A spoon? A mouse? A spaceship? A waterfall?).

In this 3rd example, is that we use cosa in the same way you’d say “thingy” when you don’t remember the actual name of an object.
“Cosa” is a noun, thus you will need to remember, in this specific 3rd scenario, to also decline it according to what are you referring to/pointing at.
If you’re referring to a piatto (male noun meaning plate, dish) then you should say coso if you’re referring to it.
If you’re referring to some specific breed of conigli (means “rabbits”) then you will need to use the plural form of the noun which would be cosi (sounds a little bit rude).
With so many uses, it’s no wonder that it ranks #1 among the top 1000 most common Italian words in the Italian language.

Learn more about other meanings of the word cosa in Italian.

The most popular Italian word

We just told you the most popular word is cosa. However, deciding which is the most popular Italian word is not so simple.
Here’s another very common Italian word: ciao.
Ciao means hello and is pronounced as “chaw” since it’s a word Italians use every day.
It is mainly used in informal contexts. You can say ciao to friends and family members.
Ciao comes from the Venetian dialect (spoken in the Northeast of Italy), more specifically from the phrase s-ciào vostro, literally meaning “I am your slave”.
In the 17th century, this expression was used by servants when addressing their employers.
Often, s-ciào vostro was shortened to simply s-ciào and then to ciào.
With time, this word lost all its servile connotations and started to be used as an informal greeting (instead of Buongiorno, Buona Sera or Buona Notte).

Read more about the most popular Italian word.

The verb mangiare in Italian

This is probably the most important Italian verb you need to know if you’re planning to go to Italy!
It is well known all around the world that the boot-shaped peninsula has a huge eating culture.
Mangiare is a regular verb of the first conjugation and follows the typical –are pattern:
Io mangio= I eat
Tu mangi= you eat
Lui/Lei mangia= He/she eats
Noi mangiamo= we eat
Voi mangiate= you (plural) eat
Loro mangiano= they eat
Here’s a list of all the Italian meals you will find yourself invited to by your Italian friends:

colazione
breakfast
spuntino
light meal, nibble
pranzo
lunch
merenda
snack
aperitivo
aperitif
cena
dinner
spuntino di mezzanotte
midnight snack

Just so you know, it is incorrect to use mangiare followed by the meals we just described above, so we DO NOT SAY: mangiare colazione, pranzo, etc.
Instead, for colazione, spuntino, merenda, and aperitivo, we use the word fare (to do):

fare colazione
to have breakfast
fare uno spuntino
to have a nibble
fare merenda
to have a snack
fare l’aperitivo
to have an aperitif

To talk about lunch (pranzo) and dinner (cena), we actually use these verbs:

pranzare
to have lunch
cenare
to have dinner

Learn more about the verb mangiare and other Italian food phrases.

Are flashcards useful to learn common Italian words?

Now that we’ve shown you the benefits of focusing on the common words, let’s go over the methods to memorize them.
Casual learners love making flashcards, either on paper, on websites, or apps like Anki, Memrise, and Quizlet.
Anki is a digital flashcard creator that’s fairly popular in the language learning community.
You can use it to create your flashcards and its function goes beyond language learning.
The user interface is not the most modern, but it gets the job done.
Plus, you can use your phone, desktop, or tablet to learn basic Italian words.
Memrise has a more friendly user interface for creating and reading digital flashcards.
Our favorite part about Memrise is the ability to leverage the other digital flashcards that other community members have created.
For learning Italian, you’ll find several flashcard collections you can choose from.
Here’s an example of how to go through flashcards with Quizlet:

Does that help? Maybe, but it has some serious limits.

The problem with flashcards of common words

Now that you’re about to rush to download an app to memorize the top 1000 Italian words, I’ll spoil the fun.
This point is going to upset a lot of people.
Even though flashcard apps are the hottest thing in language learning right now, I’ll tell you to stop using them.
Stop using flashcards. Stop learning vocabulary from list of terms, or decks, or programs. Stop.
It doesn’t work, it’s a waste of time, and it’s creating bad patterns in your brain.
Even if your goal is to memorize these 1000 words, it won’t help you.
It could be Italian numbers, common Italian phrases, anything.
Learning anything (words, phrases, ideas, whatever) against its translation is creating extra steps in your brain.
It’s making you slow. It makes you think slowly, hear slowly, speak slowly.
I have a feeling that many of you reading this have experienced this frustration. I have experienced it, and it’s horrible.
There are few things as frustrating as knowing that you know what something means, but not being able to understand it when you see or hear it.

But the problem is that learning incorrectly is creating a maze that your brain has to run through as it processes every word.

You don’t do that to yourself in English (or whatever your native language), so why are you doing that with a foreign language?
Even if you take nootropics for studying languages to boost brain power, you can still get better results with other methods.

Put words in context

Apps such as Anki, Memrise, and Quizlet focus on traditional single-word flashcard study.
For example, a student of Italian may have a set of flashcards for studying the days of the week, with the basic Italian word on one side and the English translation on the other side.
In contrast, well-designed language courses focus on studying vocabulary in context by prompting the user to fill in the missing word in a sentence or repeating whole sentences.
With context-based flashcards, you’ll learn the meaning of the word, the appropriate situations to use the word, and you’ll also have the chance to learn related vocabulary at the same time.

When presented with vocabulary in rich contexts provided by authentic texts instead of in isolated vocabulary drills, students become more actively engaged in using words, analyzing word meanings, and creating relationships between words.
That’s also the case of the top 1000 Italian words.
This helps develop skills and strategies that will allow them to more easily determine the meaning of unfamiliar words.
A growing number of people have realized that studying in context provides a faster, more enjoyable, and more effective method for studying a large amount of vocabulary.
If you’re currently using a single-word study app and are looking for a better way to learn, here’s the best learning resource for the Italian language.

How to put words in context

One of the great things about learning a foreign language is that you can be creative. You need creativity and motivation to develop your language skills.
This is why, when it comes to vocabulary, one of the best tools you have to memorize new words and grasp their meanings is your own brain.
You could start with the easiest words.
Choose five to ten words that you like and invent a story, a tongue twister, a song, or a poem.
Something that makes sense or that makes you laugh.
You can repeat it and show it to your friends.
Your brain will remember those words in context and that’s your aim.
You could then move onto the next level and choose five to ten words that you find hard to remember.
If what you find difficult is the correct pronunciation, you could invent a tongue twister for each word and repeat it.
You could then invent Italian  stories with those words.
These are just ideas.
You can find your own way to be creative.
The important thing is that you use the vocabulary in context.

Group words into sentences, not categories

These words will form the foundation of your Italian vocabulary.
They’re some of the most frequent words you will encounter, and they’re all easy to learn.
Because these words are grouped together into sentences, they will be much easier to memorize when compared with the typical word lists that you find in language textbooks and classrooms, where you learn colors one day, types of vegetables the next day, members of the family the following day, etc.
Learning entire categories of words is a waste of time because you don’t need all those words and many compete with each other for your memory. After all, they’re similar.

Learn more about Italian vocabulary.

Common Italian phrases

How to use these words in real phrases?
Check out this list of common Italian phrases sorted by context:

• Travel information
• Restaurants
• Hotels
• Making plans
• Attractions
• Food & drink
• Polite expressions
• Culture

Every phrase comes with its English translation.
If you want to practice those words and phrases and not just read them, I recommend audio lessons based on spaced repetition.

The best way to put words in practice: Ripeti con me!

You don’t have to give up on learning the top 1000 Italian words. You only need a good method!
The best way to acquire words and phrases naturally without relying on translation is with a well-designed set of sentences from conversations in the right order.
A focus on audio over text also helps bypass reading habits based on your native language.
This also makes it possible to learn Italian in the car.
The Italian audio course “Ripeti con me!” covers the 1000 most common Italian words in a set of sentences grouped by grammar patterns.
Those patterns are acquired almost unconsciously, while the very act of speaking bypassing translation will get you to think in Italian.
What’s more, since these are audio lessons, you’ll learn the new words with pronunciation.
This course provides plenty of comprehensible input balanced by variety and relevance, in small daily doses (spaced repetition).

Learn more about Ripeti Con Me.verbal phrases

This article is for everyone in love with the Italian language. Whether you are just thinking of learning italiano or are already proficient in it, it doesn’t matter. Here you will find a selection of materials and tips on how to learn Italian. Brew a delicious coffee, pause The Young Pope, open your favorite notebook, and andiamo!

Features of the Italian language

• Dialects or individual languages? Italy historically developed as a country of city-states. As a result, each of them has a local dialect. A single language standard was introduced only in 1861, after the unification of the country. The dialects of lingua italiana are still so diverse that not all Italians understand each other (especially if one is from the South and the other from the North).

• Omnipresent articles. Not as bad as German, Italian still tries to knock you out of your shoes with its 8 articlesor 15, if you count their variants and short versions — take a gander.

• Language of art. Music students should be familiar with words like crescendo, staccato, or forte. Many terms of art and music originated in Italian culture during the Renaissance. By the way, modern italiano originated in the Tuscan dialect group. This is the high style that Petrarch and Dante used and popularized. So Italian is truly a literary language.
• It is read like it is written. A big advantage of Italian is that it is “phonetic» — the pronunciation of words coincides with their spelling. This is no French with its four-letter-one-sound combinations. The pronunciation itself is not easy for everyone, but more on that later.
• Vowel endings. Many words in Italian end with vowels. This gives it a special melody. Italians also love double consonants. There are words with three such pairs at once. For example: appallottolareto form into a ball or disseppellireto unearth.
• The subject is often omitted in colloquial Italian. It is already clear who or what is performing the action from the agreement of the verb. Therefore, the subject is not pronounced.
• Active suffixes. In this way, Italian is reminiscent of Russian. Both use suffixes to give the word different shades of meaning. For example, ragazzo — a guy; ragazzino, ragazzetto — a small guy; ragazzone — a big guy.

How to learn Italian on your own?

Learning Italian on your own is plausible. The only question is how much time, effort, and money you are willing to spend. Here are some general tips for learning lingua italiana:

• Study your “own” resources. With studying languages, everything is individual. You can find dozens of tutorials that have worked for others but somehow don’t for you. Look for something you find interesting personally. It’s not just about specific textbooks, but about methods in general. For some, it is easier to perceive information with their eyes, for some to listen, and others are advised to touch the objects in order to better memorize new words. Ideally, all of these techniques should be used. This makes the learning process faster.
• Always find new motivation. Learning Italian is easier when you need it: for college admission, work, or marriage. In this case, you do not need to look for motivation — it is always with you. But more often italiano is learned out of love. It lives for three years for some, for others for three months, and for the rest for only three days. Italian can easily carry you away: it’s beautiful and melodic, the language of fashion and art. However, this motivation is easy to lose. So always remind yourself why you fell in love with the language. Remember how you first wanted to learn Italian, when you saw a game by “Inter”Italian football team or watched The Taming of the Scoundrela 1980 feature film starring Adriano Celentano.
• Un passo alla volta, which means “step by step.” Learn gradually. Take your time with grammar. First, pay attention to Italian phonetics, reading rules, learn the first 100 words and basic constructions. Leave all the other complications for later. If you need italiano for study or work, you will have to get there anyway.
• Immerse yourself in the language environment. The ideal option is to go there to live, study at the university, or at least attend one-week courses. If that doesn’t suit you, surround yourself with Italy. And no, this does not mean eating pizza and drinking espresso every day (although this is also possible). Listen to Italian music and podcasts, watch TV shows and movies, switch your phone to Italian, and so on.

Lessico — Italian words

Vocabulary is the main component of the language. And you need to improve yours regularly and correctly. We will tell you about the methods of learning Italian words. Spoiler alert: there is no cramming in this section.

Borrowed words

Generous Italians have gifted many words to other languages, including English. They are familiar to everyone: bank, tomato, passport, etc. And don’t even get us started on lexical borrowings in culture and architecture:

• Balcone — balcony;
• Arca — arch;
• Museo — museum;
• Musica — music;
• Ballerina is still a ballerina.

English and Italian vocabulary are very similar. When learning italiano, pay attention to the roots of words. In English, they sound different, but the writing and meaning are the same. The Spanish speakers have nothing to do here. These languages ​​are so close that you almost speak Italian already.

Sometimes you come across words posing as others. For example, the Italian word camera means «room» and “camera” is macchina fotografica.

The Importance of context

A common mistake when learning new words is to take them out of context. How does it usually happen at school? We write down the vocabulary in a column, add the translations and memorize it all. You are lucky if the words were given on the same topic, for example, «medicine.» Then they are easier to remember. But more often than not, the vocabulary is given randomly: we begin with the verb mangiare — “to eat,” and end with tirapugni — “brass knuckles.” So no associations are built between words.

Therefore, it is best to learn vocabulary in context. You will sooner remember that mago is a «magician» if you read at least a few sentences where it is used. For example: Il mago ha fatto un incantesimo sul cavalierethe wizard cursed the knight; Il mago l’ha trasformato in una ranathe wizard has turned him into a frog. The same goes for the set expressions: alzare i tacchiflee (as in «run away»), montare la testato put on airs, etc.

List of necessary words

Make a list of essential words with which to start learning a language. Here we are talking not only about the clichéd «20 basic phrases in Italian», but also about what is important for you. Let’s say you love movies and can chat about them for hours. Find and make a list of words on the topic of «cinema». It will be easier for you to memorize new vocabulary, because it is related to the topic of interest to you. Plus, it will come in handy in communicating with the native, to tell about yourself and your hobbies.

Italian songs

Lingua italiana is a melodic language. There are just so many beautiful songs written in it. You don’t have to be an opera lover to listen to Italian music. Some of the most popular performers are Il Volo, Andrea Bocelli, Adriano Celentano, Laura Pausini, and others. Enjoy the music while learning new words. There are special apps to learn the language from the lyrics. For example, lyricstraining.com.

30 first verbs to learn in Italian

Resources

Grammatica — Italian grammar

Grammar is one of the most difficult aspects of any language, and Italian is no exception. At first, it looks rather simple, but as the days get longer, the cold gets stronger. Every time you think you’ve learned a rule, a new detail appears, and then another and another. Here are some tricks that should help you to survive and not get lost in the thicket of Imperativo, Condizionale, and Congiuntivo.

Define a goal

First, define a goal. Why are you learning Italian? There are two main approaches: jumping straight into the rules or immersing yourself in the language — listen, watch and read, without delving into grammar. You don’t always need to know how something works in order to apply it in life. This is also true for foreign languages. To understand and speak it, you don’t need to waste time on a detailed analysis of grammar. Basic knowledge is enough for traveling and communication. But if you are taking CILS, going to study or work in Italy, it is better to understand the twists and turns of grammar rules from the very beginning.

First the rule — then practice

We analyze the rule and only then use it with examples. A universal order, which many tend to forget. In most textbooks, the authors first give texts with constructions unknown to the student and only afterward do they explain what has just happened. It’s much better to do it in the opposite order: read the rule → look at the examples → put it all into practice. The latter should preferably be done both in writing and out loud. This way, the grammar is also consolidated in oral speech.

Learn verb conjugation

Verbs are perhaps the most daunting part of Italian grammar. Mostly because of the conjugations that strike terror into the hearts of beginners. For example, the complete declension table of the verb essere — «to be» — in all tenses and forms looks like this:

In reality, everything is not that scary. In short, there are 3 groups of verbs in Italian:

• With the ending -are: lavorare — to work, visitare — to visit;
• With the ending -ere: scrivere — to write, decidere — to decide;
• With the ending -ire: dormire — to sleep, sentire — to feel/hear.

Within the same group, they all conjugate in the same way. Of course, there are exceptions. Every self-respecting language has a couple (dozen or hundred). But for the entry level, only the most basic ones are needed: essere — to be, and avere — to have.

Multiple sources are better than one

Get your knowledge of the language from different resources. Even if you are sure that you are studying the best textbook in the world, written by an Italian, still take several sources. Don’t limit yourself to one thing. Use the Internet, mobile applications, and other study materials: videos, podcasts, magazines, blogs, and more.

Resources

Comprensione orale — What to listen to in Italian?

The most enjoyable part of learning Italian is listening. It is pleasant for two reasons. First, the very sound of lingua italiana. Second, the amount of fun and free study materials you can use. How to develop listening skills?

Films and TV shows

Watch movies and TV shows in Italian. It’s a fun and effective way to learn to understand native speakers. The only nuance is that it works well as an addition, but not as the primary method. Perhaps not everyone will like Italian cinema, but there are many world-famous classics among their directors. So getting to know them will be useful not only for language learning but also for general development. Famous Italian directors are Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Paolo Sorrentino, and so on.

You can find subtitled Italian films and series on streaming services like Netflix or YouTube. You can always find content with English subtitles, but if your level is B1 or higher, it is better to watch immediately with Italian subs. This way you will not get lost in translation and get the greatest benefits from the series.

Radio and podcasts

A great way to learn to understand a language is to listen to radio and podcasts. If you like the first option, then get ready. Italian speakers speak very quickly. There are many different stations: the first state-owned RAI Radio, the musical Lattemiele, the Neapolitan Radio Kiss Kiss Italia, and others.

Among the podcasts, we suggest you look into News in Slow Italian. This is a topical news program covering the field of politics, science, and culture. They are recorded at different speeds and vocabulary for levels from Beginner to Advanced. Plus, the site has free Italian courses and the news itself contains a transcript and even translations of some words. Other interesting resources: Italy made easy, Max Mondo, Sientificast, Daily Cogito. The last two are suitable for levels B2-C1.

Audiobooks

Another source for developing your language comprehension skills is audiobooks in Italian. Here the choice depends only on your preferences. In theory, you can even listen to those works that you do not understand. The bottom line is that you get used to Italian and after a while, you begin to distinguish between individual phrases and words. Audiobooks are easy to find on Audible, but they cost money. More options are available on YouTube or on LibriVox. And you can choose the book yourself: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino, or whatever you like.

Italian YouTube

We promised that listening will be the most fun part of learning the language. Any resources are suitable for developing skills, and YouTube is no exception. Find Italian blogs with topics that interest you: the culture and life of the country, comedic sketches, film analysis, and more. A big advantage of this format is that people communicate less formally. From them you can learn trendy words, slang and other amenities of the Italian language, which you will not hear on the radio or in podcasts. Also try to watch bloggers from different cities. This will help you to better understand dialects and learn about the regional characteristics of Italy. Channels to look out for: Marcello Ascani, Massimo Polidoro, Breaking Italy.

Resources

Lettura — What to read in Italian?

Reading in a foreign language is difficult. Many people postpone this skill for later. They think: «Now I will learn to speak, then enrich my vocabulary, and finally…» And finally what? In reality, without reading, you cannot improve other aspects of Italian. After all, from books you will learn new words and expressions that make speaking more interesting, and practice grammar at the same time. So what to read in italiano?

Adapted texts

For those who are just starting out on their journey of learning Italian, short stories and dialogues are suitable. They can be found in textbooks or on the internet. For example, sites such as Think in Italian or Lingua have easy texts specifically for the A2 level. When you get bored with such reading, move on to adapted works or books with parallel translation.

News

If you want to get a feel of the modern Italian language, read the news. This is a good way to train your reading skills and stay up-to-date with world events. Plus, this way you immerse yourself in the political and social life of Italy — you will find out what is important for the local population. Find extracts from the daily newspapers like Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, Il Messaggero, and La Stampa.

Fiction

It is impossible to learn Italian without referring to its literature. After all, the works of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio essentially became the primary source from which the modern version of the language emerged. We are not suggesting that you charge the classics of the Renaissance. This way you will scare both yourself and them. You need to gradually submerge in Italian literature. Below is a video showing Italians offering 15 of the best books to read in their language. You can choose one of the options, but always remember two rules: personal interest and level of language proficiency.

Better start with more relevant pieces. There you will find vocabulary that will be useful now, not 500 years ago. Books in Italian can be found on the Readlang, Liber Liber, and in many FB communities. Italiano enthusiasts enjoy sharing their accumulated wisdom.

Poems

This method is more suitable for developing the feeling of language and expanding your general outlook. If you have already reached the heights in Italian prose, try to study the subtle matters of poetry. Untranslated poems are easy to find on the Internet. For example, here on this resource there are poems with a parallel translation into English.

Resources

Produzione scritta — Let’s write in Italian

A big upside of the Italian language — words are written as they are heard. The difficulty in writing in italiano comes mainly from grammar and sounding like an italian. If you are learning the language for travels, you can omit the rules and practice of writing. But for those wishing to study and work in Italy, there is no escape from them. Take a notebook, a pen, and get ready for work.

Look at samples

Use materials that someone else has written as examples. It is better to take them from the native speakers themselves in order to write like a true Italian. A common mistake of foreign learners is direct translations. This is especially true for beginners who do not yet have a sense of the language. They take the sentence in their native language and translate it «as is» into Italian. Most often, it turns out logically and grammatically correct, but it is noticeable that a foreigner is writing. For example, you can start a business letter with the words “Buongiorno, …” and you will be understood. However, the locals are more likely to greet you like this: “Egregiodear (close to «darling») / Spettabiledear (more official) / Gentileestimable.” This also needs to be learned. Interaction with natives helps a lot in this.

Find a pen pal

To spice up your practice, chat in Italian. There are many platforms on the Internet where you can meet native speakers. For example, Tandem, Hello Talk, Ablo, or Interpals. Try to find someone who really fixes your shortcomings. Also, remember that «native» is not always equal to “flawless.” They can sometimes make mistakes in spelling and punctuation just like your doing in the English.

Corresponding with an Italian is great. But if your goal is to work and study in the country, business writing skills, essays and abstracts are required. So practice with all types of texts. Of course, here we are talking about people who have already reached the level of B1-B2. At the beginning of the journey, there is no point in tormenting yourself with the description of graphs in Italian.

Transcribe audios

Technique for intermediate to advanced level — listen to audio and write down a transcript of it (preferably by hand). This is how you simultaneously improve your listening skills and practice writing. At first it seems that this is quite easy, because in general you understand the announcer. But when it comes to writing every single word according to all the rules of grammar, the difficulty rises steeply. But do not worry, a couple of dozen texts and everything will go smoothly.

Resources

Produzione orale — How to speak Italian?

One of the main goals for Italian learners is to learn how to speak it. Fortunately, this is not the most difficult aspect of the language. The main thing is to practice a lot and correctly.

Find a conversation partner

The best way to develop your communication skills is to find a conversation partner. Ideally, they should be Italian. With a partner, you not only train speaking but also get acquainted with the peculiarities of Italian mentality. A native speaker will tell you about the intricacies of pronunciation and use of specific words. Check out italki, Speaky, or Easy Language Exchange. There you can find teachers of Italian and just friends for communication.

But you don’t have to practice exclusively with native speakers. Foreigners who speak italiano also work fine. Try talking clubs, which are often found in language schools and cultural centers. Just choose a group according to your level. If you already have B1, you may not be very comfortable interacting with beginners.

Speak all the phrases out loud

Learning a language while silently moving your lips will not work. You need to speak Italian right away. Now you have learned the first 30 or 300 — no matter how many — words. Take them and make a sentence, and then be sure to say it out loud. If it’s hard for you, read ready-made Italian texts aloud. You need to get used to speaking Italian, and train your vocal apparatus. Otherwise, there is a risk of crashing into the language barrier. A person can know the entire vocabulary inside out, but find it difficult to connect words in speech.

Expand your vocabulary

The vocabulary is divided into passive and active. The first is vocabulary that you only learn but rarely use. The second is regularly used phrases. To communicate fluently in Italian, you need to move as many words as possible from passive to active. How? Through practice, of course. As soon as you learn a new word, immediately add it to your speech. Repeat it one, two, ten times to secure. It is important to do this in context, as part of a phrase.

Resources

Pronuncia — How to master Italian pronunciation?

First, let’s define what «Italian» pronunciation is, and if it exists at all. The special feature of lingua italiana is the huge number of dialects, which in fact were formed as separate languages. Italy had been a country of city-states for a long time, so each region has its own dialect. And although they are all rooted in Latin, they sound completely different. Today, the most common variant is the official Italian, created after the unification of Italy. The second most popular language is the Neapolitan language. It is used in the south of the country.

«Neutral» Italian

Foreigners are advised to learn the official version of italiano. In general, with Italian it is best to focus on the correct pronunciation of words first. And only after, when you have already reached an advanced level, sharpen your accent. The easiest and most efficient way is to move to Italy. Sounds tempting, but expensive, and doesn’t suit everyone. Another option is classes with a professional linguist (maybe an Italian) who will correct all your mistakes. But even without the accent, they will understand you in any case. The question is what do you want: just speak the language or speak like a local. If the former, then leave the accent correction for last.

Observe the articulation

Italian pronunciation is characterized by distinct articulation. Therefore, when learning a language, it is important not only to listen, but also to watch how the native speaker talks. Pay attention to the movement of the lips, tongue: how wide the mouth opens on vowel sounds, how consonants are annunciated, and so on.

Learn gestures

No Italian conversation is complete without active gestures. Non-verbal communication plays a large role in their daily life, so we advise you to study it. Facial expressions, gestures and posture are special parts of the language. It is best to practice speaking with native speakers. Or you can watch the video on YouTube. For example, here are 60 Italian gestures explained (and this is just a part). Well, for aesthetes there is a similar video from Dolce & Gabbana. It is also worth mentioning that the Italians in the comments easily spot foreign models by incorrectly shown gestures. Can you?

But be careful. Do not mindlessly copy every movement of local residents. Otherwise, there is a risk of slipping into the parody zone and offending everyone around you. It is important to understand the true meaning of the gesture (in different situations and regions). This aspect of the language should be considered when you are already on C1-C2 level.

Resources

There are four main options for where to learn Italian:

• Language school (group lessons);
• Individual lessons with a tutor;
• Language courses abroad;
• On your own.

Italian courses abroad

Resources for self-studying Italian

Why learn Italian?

Lingua italiana is significantly less widespread than English and Chinese. But you probably know at least a couple of Italian words and use them regularly in your everyday life. For example, when you order pizza or go to the bank. So you are surrounded by Italy. In addition, italiano is the fourth most studied language in the world. A very good achievement for its relatively small size. Why do people learn Italian?

Italian for Study

Italy is one of the most affordable European countries for study. The average tuition fee is 4,421 USD per year. There are also many ancient universities: Bologna, Padua, Neapolitan and others. Plus, universities in Italy provide students with good scholarships — from 1,105 USD to 11,051 USD. They cover tuition and living expenses. True, to study there you need to know italiano. There are programs in English, but there are much fewer of them. And the level of fluency in the country is not the highest (worse than in Bulgaria). Foreign students say that knowledge of Italian is necessary for staying in the country anyway. The standard admission requirement is B2. To prove your level of proficiency, you need to pass one of the exams. Most often it is CILS, but there are also CELI and PLIDA.

So if you are planning to study in Italy, it is better to study with a tutor right away. Find a tutor who has personally taken one of the exams, or sign up for a preparatory course at a language school. In theory, preparing for CILS on your own is possible, but then you should study using special textbooks to understand the format of the assignments.

Italian for work

In terms of international business, Italian offers fewer opportunities than Spanish or French. However, if you want to work in the country, then you cannot do it without knowing the local language. This is not a mandatory requirement and no one will ask you for confirmation to get a work visa. But it is still desirable to own it at least at the level B1-B2.

Get ready though — it is not easy to find a job in Italy. The unemployment rate among foreigners is one of the highest in Europe at 13.1%^[1]. The problem of finding a job is also relevant for Italians themselves. Over the past few years, more than 800,000 young people have left the country. This is more than the entire population of Palermo^[2]. The main reasons are a lack of jobs and poor career prospects.

It is easiest for foreigners to find a job where special qualifications are not required: nanny, worker, entertainer, housemaid, and so on. You can also find a job as an English or another language teacher. Also, always remember that every region of Italy is like a mini-country. Salaries, requirements and the approach to foreigners differ. For example, in the South it will be easier to find a job without knowing italiano. But in the North, you will most likely be checked for your level of language proficiency.

Italian for immigration

There are people who study Italian for one specific purpose — to immigrate. In general, this can be done without knowing italiano. There are many examples of people coming to Italy without knowing the language and staying for life. But we advise you to study it up to level A2-B1. This way, you will avoid problems in everyday communication at first. Knowledge of Italian is essential in any case: without it, you cannot become a part of society. Of course, someone just wants to live in Italy, but what’s the point if you remain an alien to the locals?

The process of obtaining citizenship here is not the fastest (in fact, like all bureaucratic procedures), and takes up to 10 yearsthrough employment. If you graduate from an Italian university, you are given a year to stay in the country and look for a job.

Italian for travel

Every year Italy attracts millions of tourists^[3]. This amazing country offers travelers everything: delicious food, beautiful landscapes, historical sites and hospitable locals. It’s a great idea to drive through Italy to see all the regions. Indeed, each has its own peculiarities of language, mentality, traditions and even cuisine. Don’t forget that Italian is also useful for visiting other countries: Switzerland, San Marino, as well as some regions of Slovenia and Croatia.

If you are learning italiano for traveling, then focus on speaking, listening, and vocabulary. Choose the words and phrases that you need first. Below is a list of the most important expressions for tourists. Better learn them beforehand. This is more convenient than looking in the dictionary every other minute.

15 phrases in Italian for a tourist

Italian for yourself

Study, work, and immigration are all noble reasons for learning Italian, but far from the only ones. Many people choose it for its sound and beauty. Others admire the expressiveness and the flamboyant temperament of the natives. And others fall in love with Italian cuisine. Whichever category you put yourself in, the main thing is to stay motivated. Learning lingua italiana «for yourself» is the hardest part, especially if you study it on your own. In order not to lose your enthusiasm, remind yourself why you decided to take on this feat at all. Revisit that movie with Marcello Mastroianni that won you over, or listen to a concert of Il Volo.

Italian Exams

To confirm the level of proficiency, you must pass an international exam. This is required for entry to university and getting a job in Italydepends on the employer. There are several options for Italian:

• CELI;
• CILS;
• PLIDA

The most popular is CILS (Certificazione di Italiano come Lingua Straniera). It has four levels, with 1 being «beginner» and 4 being “native.” The exam has five sections:

• Listening;
• Reading;
• Letter;
• Vocabulary / grammar;
• The oral part.

In CELI (Certificati di Lingua Italiana) there is one more level — 5 major ones, plus an additional CELI Impatto equal to A1. Also, the test does not have separate lexical and grammatical parts.

Unlike English IELTS and TOEFL, all certificates are perpetual.

More details

This article is about the Italian language. For the regional varieties of standard Italian, see Regional Italian.

Italian
italiano, lingua italiana
Pronunciation	[itaˈljaːno]
Native to	Italy, San Marino, Vatican City, Switzerland (Ticino and Italian Grisons), Slovenia (Slovenian Littoral), Croatia (Western Istria)
Ethnicity	Italians
Speakers	Native: 65 million (2012)[1] L2: 3.1 million[1] Total: 68 million[1]
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Romance Italo-Western Italo-Dalmatian Italian
Early forms	Old Latin Vulgar Latin Tuscan Florentine
Dialects	Tuscan dialects, Central italian dialects, various forms of regional Italian
Writing system	Latin (Italian alphabet) Italian Braille
Signed forms	Italiano segnato «(Signed Italian)»[2] italiano segnato esatto «(Signed Exact Italian)»[3]
Official status
Official language in	4 countries Italy San Marino Switzerland Vatican City 2 regions Slovene Istria (Slovenia) Istria County (Croatia) An order and various organisations Sovereign Military Order of Malta[4] European Union FAO Holy See OSCE IDLO IIHL Mediterranean Universities Union UNICRI UNIDROIT and others
Recognised minority language in	Bosnia and Herzegovina[a] Croatia Romania[a] Slovenia
Regulated by	Accademia della Crusca (de facto)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	it
ISO 639-2	ita
ISO 639-3	ita
Glottolog	ital1282
Linguasphere	51-AAA-q
Official language   Former co-official language   Presence of Italian-speaking communities
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Italian (italiano [itaˈljaːno] (listen) or lingua italiana [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna]) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Together with Sardinian, Italian is the least divergent language from Latin.^[6][7][8][9] Spoken by about 85 million people (2022), Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland (Ticino and the Grisons), San Marino, and Vatican City. It has official minority status in Croatia and in some areas of Slovenian Istria.

Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia.^[1] Italian is included under the languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Romania, although Italian is neither a co-official nor a protected language in these countries.^[5][10] Many speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian (either in its standard form or regional varieties) and a local language of Italy, most frequently the language spoken at home in their place of origin.^[1]

Italian is a major language in Europe, being one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and one of the working languages of the Council of Europe. It is the second-most-widely spoken native language in the European Union with 67 million speakers (15% of the EU population) and it is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens (3%).^[11][12] Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania and the United Kingdom) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is approximately 85 million.^[13] Italian is the main working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Italian has a significant use in musical terminology and opera with numerous Italian words referring to music that have become international terms taken into various languages worldwide.^[14] Italian was adopted by the state after the Unification of Italy, having previously been a literary language based on Tuscan as spoken mostly by the upper class of Florentine society.^[15] Almost all native Italian words end with vowels and has a 7-vowel sound system (‘e’ and ‘o’ have mid-low and mid-high sounds). Italian has contrast between short and long consonants and gemination (doubling) of consonants.

History[edit]

«History of Italian» redirects here. For the history of the Italian people, see Italians. For the history of the Italian culture, see culture of Italy.

Origins[edit]

During the Middle Ages, the established written language in Europe was Latin, though the great majority of people were illiterate, and only a handful were well versed in the language. In the Italian Peninsula, as in most of Europe, most would instead speak a local vernacular. These dialects, as they are commonly referred to, evolved from Vulgar Latin over the course of centuries, unaffected by formal standards and teachings. They are not in any sense «dialects» of standard Italian, which itself started off as one of these local tongues, but sister languages of Italian. Mutual intelligibility with Italian varies widely, as it does with Romance languages in general. The Romance languages of Italy can differ greatly from Italian at all levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, pragmatics) and are classified typologically as distinct languages.^[16][17]

The standard Italian language has a poetic and literary origin in the writings of Tuscan and Sicilian writers of the 12th century, and, even though the grammar and core lexicon are basically unchanged from those used in Florence in the 13th century,^[18] the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. However, Romance vernacular as language spoken in the Italian Peninsula has a longer history. In fact, the earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called vernacular (as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae known as the Placiti Cassinesi from the Province of Benevento that date from 960 to 963, although the Veronese Riddle, probably from the 8th or early 9th century, contains a late form of Vulgar Latin that can be seen as a very early sample of a vernacular dialect of Italy. The Commodilla catacomb inscription is also a similar case.

The Italian language has progressed through a long and slow process, which started after the Western Roman Empire’s fall in the 5th century.^[19]

The language that came to be thought of as Italian developed in central Tuscany and was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri, written in his native Florentine. Dante’s epic poems, known collectively as the Commedia, to which another Tuscan poet Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed the title Divina, were read throughout the peninsula and his written dialect became the «canonical standard» that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language. In addition to the widespread exposure gained through literature, the Florentine dialect also gained prestige due to the political and cultural significance of Florence at the time and the fact that it was linguistically an intermediate between the northern and the southern Italian dialects.^[16]: 22 Thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy.

Italian was progressively made an official language of most of the Italian states predating unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (like Spain in the Kingdom of Naples, or Austria in the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia), even though the masses kept speaking primarily their local vernaculars. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city because the cities, until recently, were thought of as city-states. Those dialects now have considerable variety. As Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of Regional Italian. The most characteristic differences, for instance, between Roman Italian and Milanese Italian are syntactic gemination of initial consonants in some contexts and the pronunciation of stressed «e», and of «s» between vowels in many words: e.g. va bene «all right» is pronounced [vabˈbɛːne] by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), [vaˈbeːne] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line); a casa «at home» is [akˈkaːsa] for Roman, [akˈkaːsa] or [akˈkaːza] for standard, [aˈkaːza] for Milanese and generally northern.^[20]

In contrast to the Gallo-Italic linguistic panorama of Northern Italy, the Italo-Dalmatian, Neapolitan and its related dialects were largely unaffected by the Franco-Occitan influences introduced to Italy mainly by bards from France during the Middle Ages, but after the Norman conquest of southern Italy, Sicily became the first Italian land to adopt Occitan lyric moods (and words) in poetry. Even in the case of Northern Italian languages, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages.

The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time (Late Middle Ages) gave its language weight, though Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, and Ligurian (or Genoese) remained in use in maritime trade alongside the Mediterranean. The increasing political and cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of the rise of the Medici Bank, humanism, and the Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts.

Renaissance[edit]

The Renaissance era, known as il Rinascimento in Italian, was seen as a time of rebirth, which is the literal meaning of both renaissance (from French) and rinascimento (Italian).

During this time, long-existing beliefs stemming from the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church began to be understood from new perspectives as humanists—individuals who placed emphasis on the human body and its full potential—began to shift focus from the church to human beings themselves.^[21] The continual advancements in technology play a crucial role in the diffusion of languages. After the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, the number of printing presses in Italy grew rapidly and by the year 1500 reached a total of 56, the biggest number of printing presses in all of Europe. This enabled the production of more pieces of literature at a lower cost and as the dominant language, Italian, spread.^[22]

Italian became the language used in the courts of every state in the Italian Peninsula, as well as the prestige variety used on the island of Corsica^[23] (but not in the neighbouring Sardinia, which on the contrary underwent Italianization well into the late 18th century, under Savoyard sway: the island’s linguistic composition, roofed by the prestige of Spanish among the Sardinians, would therein make for a rather slow process of assimilation to the Italian cultural sphere^[24][25]). The rediscovery of Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia, as well as a renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century, sparked a debate that raged throughout Italy concerning the criteria that should govern the establishment of a modern Italian literary and spoken language. This discussion, known as questione della lingua (i.e., the problem of the language), ran through the Italian culture until the end of the 19th century, often linked to the political debate on achieving a united Italian state. Renaissance scholars divided into three main factions:

• The purists, headed by Venetian Pietro Bembo (who, in his Gli Asolani, claimed the language might be based only on the great literary classics, such as Petrarch and some part of Boccaccio). The purists thought the Divine Comedy was not dignified enough because it used elements from non-lyric registers of the language.
• Niccolò Machiavelli and other Florentines preferred the version spoken by ordinary people in their own times.
• The courtiers, like Baldassare Castiglione and Gian Giorgio Trissino, insisted that each local vernacular contribute to the new standard.

A fourth faction claimed that the best Italian was the one that the papal court adopted, which was a mixture of the Tuscan and Roman dialects.^[26] Eventually, Bembo’s ideas prevailed, and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence (1582–1583), the official legislative body of the Italian language, led to the publication of Agnolo Monosini’s Latin tome Floris italicae linguae libri novem in 1604 followed by the first Italian dictionary in 1612.

Modern era[edit]

An important event that helped the diffusion of Italian was the conquest and occupation of Italy by Napoleon in the early 19th century (who was himself of Italian-Corsican descent). This conquest propelled the unification of Italy some decades after and pushed the Italian language into a lingua franca used not only among clerks, nobility, and functionaries in the Italian courts but also by the bourgeoisie.

Contemporary times[edit]

Italian literature’s first modern novel, I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) by Alessandro Manzoni, further defined the standard by «rinsing» his Milanese «in the waters of the Arno» (Florence’s river), as he states in the preface to his 1840 edition.

After unification, a huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home languages—ciao is derived from the Venetian word s-cia[v]o («slave», that is «your servant»), panettone comes from the Lombard word panetton, etc. Only 2.5% of Italy’s population could speak the Italian standardized language properly when the nation was unified in 1861.^[1]

Classification[edit]

Italian is a Romance language, a descendant of Vulgar Latin (colloquial spoken Latin). Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, especially its Florentine dialect, and is, therefore, an Italo-Dalmatian language, a classification that includes most other central and southern Italian languages and the extinct Dalmatian.

According to Ethnologue, lexical similarity is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan, 85% with Sardinian, 82% with Spanish, 80% with Portuguese, 78% with Ladin, 77% with Romanian.^[1] Estimates may differ according to sources.^[28][29]

One study, analyzing the degree of differentiation of Romance languages in comparison to Latin (comparing phonology, inflection, discourse, syntax, vocabulary, and intonation), estimated that distance between Italian and Latin is higher than that between Sardinian and Latin.^[30] In particular, its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian.^[31][32] As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive.^[33]

Geographic distribution[edit]

Italian is an official language of Italy and San Marino and is spoken fluently by the majority of the countries’ populations. Italian is the third most spoken language in Switzerland (after German and French), though its use there has moderately declined since the 1970s.^[34] It is official both on the national level and on regional level in two cantons: Ticino and the Grisons. In the latter canton, however, it is only spoken by a small minority, in the Italian Grisons.^[b] Ticino, which includes Lugano, the largest Italian-speaking city outside Italy, is the only canton where Italian is predominant.^[35] Italian is also used in administration and official documents in Vatican City.^[36]

Italian is also spoken by a minority in Monaco and France, especially in the southeastern part of the country.^[37][1] Italian was the official language in Savoy and in Nice until 1860, when they were both annexed by France under the Treaty of Turin, a development that triggered the «Niçard exodus», or the emigration of a quarter of the Niçard Italians to Italy,^[38] and the Niçard Vespers. Italian was the official language of Corsica until 1859.^[39] Italian is generally understood in Corsica by the population resident therein who speak Corsican, which is an Italo-Romance idiom similar to Tuscan.^[40] Italian was the official language in Monaco until 1860, when it was replaced by the French.^[41] This was due to the annexation of the surrounding County of Nice to France following the Treaty of Turin (1860).^[41]

It formerly had official status in Montenegro (because of the Venetian Albania), parts of Slovenia and Croatia (because of the Venetian Istria and Venetian Dalmatia), parts of Greece (because of the Venetian rule in the Ionian Islands and by the Kingdom of Italy in the Dodecanese). Italian is widely spoken in Malta, where nearly two-thirds of the population can speak it fluently.^[42] Italian served as Malta’s official language until 1934, when it was abolished by the British colonial administration amid strong local opposition.^[43] Italian language in Slovenia is an officially recognized minority language in the country.^[44] The official census, carried out in 2002, reported 2,258 ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians) in Slovenia (0.11% of the total population).^[45] Italian language in Croatia is an official minority language in the country, with many schools and public announcements published in both languages.^[44] The 2001 census in Croatia reported 19,636 ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians) in the country (some 0.42% of the total population).^[46] Their numbers dropped dramatically after World War II following the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus, which caused the emigration of between 230,000 and 350,000 Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians.^[47][48] Italian was the official language of the Republic of Ragusa from 1492 to 1807.^[49]

It formerly had official status in Albania due to the annexation of the country to the Kingdom of Italy (1939–1943). Albania has a large population of non-native speakers, with over half of the population having some knowledge of the Italian language.^[50] The Albanian government has pushed to make Italian a compulsory second language in schools.^[51] The Italian language is well-known and studied in Albania,^[52] due to its historical ties and geographical proximity to Italy and to the diffusion of Italian television in the country.^[53]

Due to heavy Italian influence during the Italian colonial period, Italian is still understood by some in former colonies such as in Libya.^[1] Although it was the primary language in Libya since colonial rule, Italian greatly declined under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi, who expelled the Italian Libyan population and made Arabic the sole official language of the country.^[54] A few hundred Italian settlers returned to Libya in the 2000s.

Italian was the official language of Eritrea during Italian colonisation. Italian is today used in commerce, and it is still spoken especially among elders; besides that, Italian words are incorporated as loan words in the main language spoken in the country (Tigrinya). The capital city of Eritrea, Asmara, still has several Italian schools, established during the colonial period. In the early 19th century, Eritrea was the country with the highest number of Italians abroad, and the Italian Eritreans grew from 4,000 during World War I to nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II.^[55] In Asmara there are two Italian schools, the Italian School of Asmara (Italian primary school with a Montessori department) and the Liceo Sperimentale «G. Marconi» (Italian international senior high school).

Italian was also introduced to Somalia through colonialism and was the sole official language of administration and education during the colonial period but fell out of use after government, educational and economic infrastructure were destroyed in the Somali Civil War.

Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia.^[1] Although over 17 million Americans are of Italian descent, only a little over one million people in the United States speak Italian at home.^[56] Nevertheless, an Italian language media market does exist in the country.^[57] In Canada, Italian is the second most spoken non-official language when varieties of Chinese are not grouped together, with 375,645 claiming Italian as their mother tongue in 2016.^[58]

Italian immigrants to South America have also brought a presence of the language to that continent. According to some sources, Italian is the second most spoken language in Argentina^[59] after the official language of Spanish, although its number of speakers, mainly of the older generation, is decreasing. Italian bilingual speakers can be found scattered across the Southeast of Brazil as well as in the South,^[1] In Venezuela, Italian is the most spoken language after Spanish and Portuguese, with around 200,000 speakers.^[60] In Uruguay, people that speak Italian as their home language is 1.1% of the total population of the country.^[61] In Australia, Italian is the second most spoken foreign language after Chinese, with 1.4% of the population speaking it as their home language.^[62]

The main Italian-language newspapers published outside Italy are the L’Osservatore Romano (Vatican City), the L’Informazione di San Marino (San Marino), the Corriere del Ticino and the laRegione Ticino (Switzerland), the La Voce del Popolo (Croatia), the Corriere d’Italia (Germany), the L’italoeuropeo (United Kingdom), the Passaparola (Luxembourg), the America Oggi (United States), the Corriere Canadese and the Corriere Italiano (Canada), the Il punto d’incontro (Mexico), the L’Italia del Popolo (Argentina), the Fanfulla (Brazil), the Gente d’Italia (Uruguay), the La Voce d’Italia (Venezuela), the Il Globo (Australia) and the La gazzetta del Sud Africa (South Africa).^[63][64][65]

Education[edit]

Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first foreign language. In the 21st century, technology also allows for the continual spread of the Italian language, as people have new ways to learn how to speak, read, and write languages at their own pace and at any given time. For example, the free website and application Duolingo has 4.94 million English speakers learning the Italian language.^[66]

According to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, every year there are more than 200,000 foreign students who study the Italian language; they are distributed among the 90 Institutes of Italian Culture that are located around the world, in the 179 Italian schools located abroad, or in the 111 Italian lecturer sections belonging to foreign schools where Italian is taught as a language of culture.^[67]

As of 2022, Australia had the highest number of students learning Italian in the world. This occurred because of support by the Italian community in Australia and the Italian Government and also because of successful educational reform efforts led by local governments in Australia.^[68]

Influence and derived languages[edit]

From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, thousands of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil and Venezuela, as well as in Canada and the United States, where they formed a physical and cultural presence.

In some cases, colonies were established where variants of regional languages of Italy were used, and some continue to use this regional language. Examples are Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where Talian is used, and the town of Chipilo near Puebla, Mexico; each continues to use a derived form of Venetian dating back to the nineteenth century. Another example is Cocoliche, an Italian–Spanish pidgin once spoken in Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires, and Lunfardo.

Lingua franca[edit]

Starting in late medieval times in much of Europe and the Mediterranean, Latin was replaced as the primary commercial language by Italian language variants (especially Tuscan and Venetian). These variants were consolidated during the Renaissance with the strength of Italy and the rise of humanism and the arts.

During that period, Italy held artistic sway over the rest of Europe. It was the norm for all educated gentlemen to make the Grand Tour, visiting Italy to see its great historical monuments and works of art. It thus became expected to learn at least some Italian. In England, while the classical languages Latin and Greek were the first to be learned, Italian became the second most common modern language after French, a position it held until the late 18th century when it tended to be replaced by German. John Milton, for instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian.

Within the Catholic Church, Italian is known by a large part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and is used in substitution for Latin in some official documents.

Italian loanwords continue to be used in most languages in matters of art and music (especially classical music including opera), in the design and fashion industries, in some sports like football^[69] and especially in culinary terms.

Languages and dialects[edit]

In Italy, almost all the other languages spoken as the vernacular—other than standard Italian and some languages spoken among immigrant communities—are often called «Italian dialects», a label that can be very misleading if it is understood to mean «dialects of Italian». The Romance dialects of Italy are local evolutions of spoken Latin that pre-date the establishment of Italian, and as such are sister languages to the Tuscan that was the historical source of Italian. They can be quite different from Italian and from each other, with some belonging to different linguistic branches of Romance. The only exceptions to this are twelve groups considered «historical language minorities», which are officially recognized as distinct minority languages by the law. On the other hand, Corsican (a language spoken on the French island of Corsica) is closely related to medieval Tuscan, from which Standard Italian derives and evolved.

The differences in the evolution of Latin in the different regions of Italy can be attributed to the natural changes that all languages in regular use are subject to, and to some extent to the presence of three other types of languages: substrata, superstrata, and adstrata. The most prevalent were substrata (the language of the original inhabitants), as the Italian dialects were most likely simply Latin as spoken by native cultural groups. Superstrata and adstrata were both less important. Foreign conquerors of Italy that dominated different regions at different times left behind little to no influence on the dialects. Foreign cultures with which Italy engaged in peaceful relations with, such as trade, had no significant influence either.^{[16]: 19-20}

Throughout Italy, regional variations of Standard Italian, called Regional Italian, are spoken. Regional differences can be recognized by various factors: the openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local language (for example, in informal situations andà, annà and nare replace the standard Italian andare in the area of Tuscany, Rome and Venice respectively for the infinitive «to go»).

There is no definitive date when the various Italian variants of Latin—including varieties that contributed to modern Standard Italian—began to be distinct enough from Latin to be considered separate languages. One criterion for determining that two language variants are to be considered separate languages rather than variants of a single language is that they have evolved so that they are no longer mutually intelligible; this diagnostic is effective if mutual intelligibility is minimal or absent (e.g. in Romance, Romanian and Portuguese), but it fails in cases such as Spanish-Portuguese or Spanish-Italian, as educated native speakers of either pairing can understand each other well if they choose to do so; however, the level of intelligibility is markedly lower between Italian-Spanish, and considerably higher between the Iberian sister languages of Portuguese-Spanish. Speakers of this latter pair can communicate with one another with remarkable ease, each speaking to the other in his own native language without slang/jargon. Nevertheless, on the basis of accumulated differences in morphology, syntax, phonology, and to some extent lexicon, it is not difficult to identify that for the Romance varieties of Italy, the first extant written evidence of languages that can no longer be considered Latin comes from the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. These written sources demonstrate certain vernacular characteristics and sometimes explicitly mention the use of the vernacular in Italy. Full literary manifestations of the vernacular began to surface around the 13th century in the form of various religious texts and poetry.^[16]: 21Although these are the first written records of Italian varieties separate from Latin, the spoken language had likely diverged long before the first written records appear, since those who were literate generally wrote in Latin even if they spoke other Romance varieties in person.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of Standard Italian became increasingly widespread and was mirrored by a decline in the use of the dialects. An increase in literacy was one of the main driving factors (one can assume that only literates were capable of learning Standard Italian, whereas those who were illiterate had access only to their native dialect). The percentage of literates rose from 25% in 1861 to 60% in 1911, and then on to 78.1% in 1951. Tullio De Mauro, an Italian linguist, has asserted that in 1861 only 2.5% of the population of Italy could speak Standard Italian. He reports that in 1951 that percentage had risen to 87%. The ability to speak Italian did not necessarily mean it was in everyday use, and most people (63.5%) still usually spoke their native dialects. In addition, other factors such as mass emigration, industrialization, and urbanization, and internal migrations after World War II, contributed to the proliferation of Standard Italian. The Italians who emigrated during the Italian diaspora beginning in 1861 were often of the uneducated lower class, and thus the emigration had the effect of increasing the percentage of literates, who often knew and understood the importance of Standard Italian, back home in Italy. A large percentage of those who had emigrated also eventually returned to Italy, often more educated than when they had left.^[16]: 35

The Italian dialects have declined in the modern era, as Italy unified under Standard Italian and continues to do so aided by mass media, from newspapers to radio to television.^[16]: 37

Phonology[edit]

Consonant phonemes

	Labial	Dental/ alveolar	Post- alveolar/ palatal	Velar
Nasal		m		n		ɲ
Stop	p	b	t	d		k	ɡ
Affricate		t͡s	d͡z	t͡ʃ	d͡ʒ
Fricative	f	v	s	z	ʃ	(ʒ)
Approximant				j		w
Lateral			l		ʎ
Trill			r

Notes:

• Between two vowels, or between a vowel and an approximant (/j, w/) or a liquid (/l, r/), consonants can be both singleton or geminated. Geminated consonants shorten the preceding vowel (or block phonetic lengthening) and the first geminated element is unreleased. For example, compare /fato/ [ˈfaːto] (‘fate’) with /fatto/ [ˈfatto] (‘fact’).^[71] However, /ɲ/, /ʃ/, /ʎ/, /dz/, /ts/ are always geminated intervocalically.^[72] Similarly, nasals, liquids, and sibilants are pronounced slightly longer in medial consonant clusters.^[73]
• /j/, /w/, and /z/ are the only consonants that cannot be geminated.
• /t, d/ are laminal denti-alveolar [t̪, d̪],^[74][75][72] commonly called «dental» for simplicity.
• /k, ɡ/ are pre-velar before /i, e, ɛ, j/.^[75]
• /t͡s, d͡z, s, z/ have two variants:
  • Dentalized laminal alveolar [t̪͡s̪, d̪͡z̪, s̪, z̪]^[74][76] (commonly called «dental» for simplicity), pronounced with the blade of the tongue very close to the upper front teeth, with the tip of the tongue resting behind lower front teeth.^[76]
  • Non-retracted apical alveolar [t͡s̺, d͡z̺, s̺, z̺].^[76] The stop component of the «apical» affricates is actually laminal denti-alveolar.^[76]
• /n, l, r/ are apical alveolar [n̺, l̺, r̺] in most environments.^[74][72][77] /n, l/ are laminal denti-alveolar [n̪, l̪] before /t, d, t͡s, d͡z, s, z/^[72][78][79] and palatalized laminal postalveolar [n̠ʲ, l̠ʲ] before /t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ, ʃ/.^{[80][81][dubious – discuss]} /n/ is velar [ŋ] before /k, ɡ/.^[82][83]
• /m/ and /n/ do not contrast before /p, b/ and /f, v/, where they are pronounced [m] and [ɱ], respectively.^[82][84]
• /ɲ/ and /ʎ/ are alveolo-palatal.^[85] In a large number of accents, /ʎ/ is a fricative [ʎ̝].^[86]
• Intervocalically, single /r/ is realised as a trill with one or two contacts.^[87] Some literature treats the single-contact trill as a tap [ɾ].^[88][89] Single-contact trills can also occur elsewhere, particularly in unstressed syllables.^[90] Geminate /rr/ manifests as a trill with three to seven contacts.^[87]
• The phonetic distinction between [s] and [z] is neutralized before consonants and at the beginning of words: the former is used before voiceless consonants and before vowels at the beginning of words; the latter is used before voiced consonants. The two can contrast only between vowels within a word, e.g. [ˈfuːzo] ‘melted’ vs. [ˈfuːso] ‘spindle’. According to Canepari,^[89] though, the traditional standard has been replaced by a modern neutral pronunciation which always prefers /z/ when intervocalic, except when the intervocalic s is the initial sound of a word, if the compound is still felt as such: for example, presento /preˈsɛnto/^[91] (‘I foresee’, with pre meaning ‘before’ and sento meaning ‘I perceive’) vs presento /preˈzɛnto/^[92] (‘I present’). There are many words for which dictionaries now indicate that both pronunciations, either [z] or [s], are acceptable. Word-internally between vowels, both phonemes have merged in many regional varieties of Italian, as either /z/ (Northern-Central) or /s/ (Southern-Central).

Italian has a seven-vowel system, consisting of /a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u/, as well as 23 consonants. Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian phonology is conservative, preserving many words nearly unchanged from Vulgar Latin. Some examples:

• Italian quattordici «fourteen» < Latin quattuordecim (cf. Spanish catorce, French quatorze /katɔʁz/, Catalan and Portuguese catorze)
• Italian settimana «week» < Latin septimāna (cf. Romanian săptămână, Spanish and Portuguese semana, French semaine /səmɛn/, Catalan setmana)
• Italian medesimo «same» < Vulgar Latin *medi(p)simum (cf. Spanish mismo, Portuguese mesmo, French même /mɛm/, Catalan mateix; note that Italian usually prefers the shorter stesso)
• Italian guadagnare «to win, earn, gain» < Vulgar Latin *guadaniāre < Germanic /waidanjan/ (cf. Spanish ganar, Portuguese ganhar, French gagner /ɡaɲe/, Catalan guanyar)

The conservative nature of Italian phonology is partly explained by its origin. Italian stems from a literary language that is derived from the 13th-century speech of the city of Florence in the region of Tuscany, and has changed little in the last 700 years or so. Furthermore, the Tuscan dialect is the most conservative of all Italian dialects, radically different from the Gallo-Italian languages less than 160 kilometres (100 mi) to the north (across the La Spezia–Rimini Line).

The following are some of the conservative phonological features of Italian, as compared with the common Western Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, Catalan). Some of these features are also present in Romanian.

• Little or no phonemic lenition of consonants between vowels, e.g. vīta > vita «life» (cf. Romanian vită, Spanish vida [ˈbiða], French vie), pedem > piede «foot» (cf. Spanish pie, French pied /pje/).
• Preservation of geminate consonants, e.g. annum > /ˈan.no/ anno «year» (cf. Spanish año /ˈaɲo/, French an /ɑ̃/, Romanian an, Portuguese ano /ˈɐnu/).
• Preservation of all Proto-Romance final vowels, e.g. pacem > pace «peace» (cf. Romanian pace, Spanish paz, French paix /pɛ/), octō > otto «eight» (cf. Romanian opt, Spanish ocho, French huit /ɥi(t)/), fēcī > feci «I did» (cf. Romanian dialectal feci, Spanish hice, French fis /fi/).
• Preservation of most intertonic vowels (those between the stressed syllable and either the beginning or ending syllable). This accounts for some of the most noticeable differences, as in the forms quattordici and settimana given above.
• Slower consonant development, e.g. folia > Italo-Western /fɔʎʎa/ > foglia /ˈfɔʎʎa/ «leaf» (cf. Romanian foaie /ˈfo̯aje/, Spanish hoja /ˈoxa/, French feuille /fœj/; but note Portuguese folha /ˈfoʎɐ/).

Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian has many inconsistent outcomes, where the same underlying sound produces different results in different words, e.g. laxāre > lasciare and lassare, captiāre > cacciare and cazzare, (ex)dēroteolāre > sdrucciolare, druzzolare and ruzzolare, rēgīna > regina and reina. Although in all these examples the second form has fallen out of usage, the dimorphism is thought to reflect the several-hundred-year period during which Italian developed as a literary language divorced from any native-speaking population, with an origin in 12th/13th-century Tuscan but with many words borrowed from languages farther to the north, with different sound outcomes. (The La Spezia–Rimini Line, the most important isogloss in the entire Romance-language area, passes only about 30 kilometres or 20 miles north of Florence.) Dual outcomes of Latin /p t k/ between vowels, such as lŏcum > luogo but fŏcum > fuoco, was once thought to be due to borrowing of northern voiced forms, but is now generally viewed as the result of early phonetic variation within Tuscany.

Some other features that distinguish Italian from the Western Romance languages:

• Latin ce-,ci- becomes /tʃe, tʃi/ rather than /(t)se, (t)si/.
• Latin -ct- becomes /tt/ rather than /jt/ or /tʃ/: octō > otto «eight» (cf. Spanish ocho, French huit, Portuguese oito).
• Vulgar Latin -cl- becomes cchi /kkj/ rather than /ʎ/: oclum > occhio «eye» (cf. Portuguese olho /ˈoʎu/, French œil /œj/ < /œʎ/); but Romanian ochi /okʲ/.
• Final /s/ is not preserved, and vowel changes rather than /s/ are used to mark the plural: amico, amici «male friend(s)», amica, amiche «female friend(s)» (cf. Romanian amic, amici and amică, amice; Spanish amigo(s) «male friend(s)», amiga(s) «female friend(s)»); trēs, sex → tre, sei «three, six» (cf. Romanian trei, șase; Spanish tres, seis).

Standard Italian also differs in some respects from most nearby Italian languages:

• Perhaps most noticeable is the total lack of metaphony, though metaphony is a feature characterizing nearly every other Italian language.
• No simplification of original /nd/, /mb/ (which often became /nn/, /mm/ elsewhere).

Assimilation[edit]

Italian phonotactics do not usually permit verbs and polysyllabic nouns to end with consonants, except in poetry and song, so foreign words may receive extra terminal vowel sounds.

Writing system[edit]

Italian has a shallow orthography, meaning very regular spelling with an almost one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. In linguistic terms, the writing system is close to being a phonemic orthography. The most important of the few exceptions are the following (see below for more details):

• The letter c represents the sound /k/ at the end of words and before the letters a, o, and u but represents the sound /tʃ/ (as the first sound in the English word chair) before the letters e and i.
• The letter g represents the sound /ɡ/ at the end of words and before the letters a, o, and u but represents the sound /dʒ/ (as the first sound in the English word gem) before the letters e and i.
• The letter n represents the phoneme /n/, which is pronounced [ŋ] (as in the English word sink or the name Ringo) before the letters c and g when these represent velar plosives /k/ or /g/, as in banco [ˈbaŋko], fungo [ˈfuŋɡo]. The letter q represents /k/ pronounced [k], thus n also represents [ŋ] in the position preceding it: cinque [ˈt͡ʃiŋkwe]. Elsewhere the letter n represents /n/ pronounced [n], including before the affricates /t͡ʃ/ or /d͡ʒ/ (equivalent to the consonants of English church and judge) spelled with c or g before the letters i and e : mancia [ˈmant͡ʃa], mangia [ˈmand͡ʒa].
• The letter h is always silent: hotel /oˈtɛl/; hanno ‘they have’ and anno ‘year’ both represent /ˈanno/. It is used to form a digraph with c or g to represent /k/ or /g/ before i or e: chi /ki/ ‘who’, che /ke/ ‘what’; aghi /ˈagi/ ‘needles’, ghetto /ˈgetto/.
• The spellings ci and gi represent only /tʃ/ (as in English church) or /dʒ/ (as in English judge) with no /i/ sound before another vowel (ciuccio /ˈtʃuttʃo/ ‘pacifier’, Giorgio /ˈdʒɔrdʒo/) unless c or g precede stressed /i/ (farmacia /farmaˈtʃia/ ‘pharmacy’, biologia /bioloˈdʒia/ ‘biology’). Elsewhere ci and gi represent /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ followed by /i/: cibo /ˈtʃibo/ ‘food’, baci /ˈbatʃi/ ‘kisses’; gita /ˈdʒita/ ‘trip’, Tamigi /taˈmidʒi/ ‘Thames’.*

The Italian alphabet is typically considered to consist of 21 letters. The letters j, k, w, x, y are traditionally excluded, though they appear in loanwords such as jeans, whisky, taxi, xenofobo, xilofono. The letter ⟨x⟩ has become common in standard Italian with the prefix extra-, although (e)stra- is traditionally used; it is also common to use the Latin particle ex(-) to mean «former(ly)» as in: la mia ex («my ex-girlfriend»), «Ex-Jugoslavia» («Former Yugoslavia»). The letter ⟨j⟩ appears in the first name Jacopo and in some Italian place-names, such as Bajardo, Bojano, Joppolo, Jerzu, Jesolo, Jesi, Ajaccio, among others, and in Mar Jonio, an alternative spelling of Mar Ionio (the Ionian Sea). The letter ⟨j⟩ may appear in dialectal words, but its use is discouraged in contemporary standard Italian.^[93] Letters used in foreign words can be replaced with phonetically equivalent native Italian letters and digraphs: ⟨gi⟩, ⟨ge⟩, or ⟨i⟩ for ⟨j⟩; ⟨c⟩ or ⟨ch⟩ for ⟨k⟩ (including in the standard prefix kilo-); ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩ or ⟨v⟩ for ⟨w⟩; ⟨s⟩, ⟨ss⟩, ⟨z⟩, ⟨zz⟩ or ⟨cs⟩ for ⟨x⟩; and ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ for ⟨y⟩.

• The acute accent is used over word-final ⟨e⟩ to indicate a stressed front close-mid vowel, as in perché «why, because». In dictionaries, it is also used over ⟨o⟩ to indicate a stressed back close-mid vowel (azióne). The grave accent is used over word-final ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ to indicate a front open-mid vowel and a back open-mid vowel respectively, as in tè «tea» and può «(he) can». The grave accent is used over any vowel to indicate word-final stress, as in gioventù «youth». Unlike ⟨é⟩, which is a close-mid vowel, a stressed final ⟨o⟩ is almost always a back open-mid vowel (andrò), with a few exceptions, like metró, with a stressed final back close-mid vowel, making ⟨ó⟩ for the most part unnecessary outside of dictionaries. Most of the time, the penultimate syllable is stressed. But if the stressed vowel is the final letter of the word, the accent is mandatory, otherwise it is virtually always omitted. Exceptions are typically either in dictionaries, where all or most stressed vowels are commonly marked. Accents can optionally be used to disambiguate words that differ only by stress, as for prìncipi «princes» and princìpi «principles», or àncora «anchor» and ancóra «still/yet». For monosyllabic words, the rule is different: when two orthographically identical monosyllabic words with different meanings exist, one is accented and the other is not (example: è «is», e «and»).
• The letter ⟨h⟩ distinguishes ho, hai, ha, hanno (present indicative of avere «to have») from o («or»), ai («to the»), a («to»), anno («year»). In the spoken language, the letter is always silent. The ⟨h⟩ in ho additionally marks the contrasting open pronunciation of the ⟨o⟩. The letter ⟨h⟩ is also used in combinations with other letters. No phoneme /h/ exists in Italian. In nativized foreign words, the ⟨h⟩ is silent. For example, hotel and hovercraft are pronounced /oˈtɛl/ and /ˈɔverkraft/ respectively. (Where ⟨h⟩ existed in Latin, it either disappeared or, in a few cases before a back vowel, changed to [ɡ]: traggo «I pull» ← Lat. trahō.)
• The letters ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩ can symbolize voiced or voiceless consonants. ⟨z⟩ symbolizes /dz/ or /ts/ depending on context, with few minimal pairs. For example: zanzara /dzanˈdzara/ «mosquito» and nazione /natˈtsjone/ «nation». ⟨s⟩ symbolizes /s/ word-initially before a vowel, when clustered with a voiceless consonant (⟨p, f, c, ch⟩), and when doubled; it symbolizes /z/ when between vowels and when clustered with voiced consonants. Intervocalic ⟨s⟩ varies regionally between /s/ and /z/, with /z/ being more dominant in northern Italy and /s/ in the south.
• The letters ⟨c⟩ and ⟨g⟩ vary in pronunciation between plosives and affricates depending on following vowels. The letter ⟨c⟩ symbolizes /k/ when word-final and before the back vowels ⟨a, o, u⟩. It symbolizes /tʃ/ as in chair before the front vowels ⟨e, i⟩. The letter ⟨g⟩ symbolizes /ɡ/ when word-final and before the back vowels ⟨a, o, u⟩. It symbolizes /dʒ/ as in gem before the front vowels ⟨e, i⟩. Other Romance languages and, to an extent, English have similar variations for ⟨c, g⟩. Compare hard and soft C, hard and soft G. (See also palatalization.)
• The digraphs ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨gh⟩ indicate (/k/ and /ɡ/) before ⟨i, e⟩. The digraphs ⟨ci⟩ and ⟨gi⟩ indicate «softness» (/tʃ/ and /dʒ/, the affricate consonants of English church and judge) before ⟨a, o, u⟩. For example:

	Before back vowel (A, O, U)	Before front vowel (I, E)
Plosive	C	caramella /karaˈmɛlla/ candy	CH	china /ˈkina/ India ink
G	gallo /ˈɡallo/ rooster	GH	ghiro /ˈɡiro/ edible dormouse
Affricate	CI	ciambella /tʃamˈbɛlla/ donut	C	Cina /ˈtʃina/ China
GI	giallo /ˈdʒallo/ yellow	G	giro /ˈdʒiro/ round, tour

Note: ⟨h⟩ is silent in the digraphs ⟨ch⟩, ⟨gh⟩; and ⟨i⟩ is silent in the digraphs ⟨ci⟩ and ⟨gi⟩ before ⟨a, o, u⟩ unless the ⟨i⟩ is stressed. For example, it is silent in ciao /ˈtʃa.o/ and cielo /ˈtʃɛ.lo/, but it is pronounced in farmacia /ˌfar.maˈtʃi.a/ and farmacie /ˌfar.maˈtʃi.e/.^[20]

Italian has geminate, or double, consonants, which are distinguished by length and intensity. Length is distinctive for all consonants except for /ʃ/, /dz/, /ts/, /ʎ/, /ɲ/, which are always geminate when between vowels, and /z/, which is always single.
Geminate plosives and affricates are realized as lengthened closures. Geminate fricatives, nasals, and /l/ are realized as lengthened continuants. There is only one vibrant phoneme /r/ but the actual pronunciation depends on context and regional accent. Generally one can find a flap consonant [ɾ] in unstressed position whereas [r] is more common in stressed syllables, but there may be exceptions. Especially people from the Northern part of Italy (Parma, Aosta Valley, South Tyrol) may pronounce /r/ as [ʀ], [ʁ], or [ʋ].^[94]

Of special interest to the linguistic study of Regional Italian is the gorgia toscana, or «Tuscan Throat», the weakening or lenition of intervocalic /p/, /t/, and /k/ in the Tuscan language.

The voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ is present as a phoneme only in loanwords: for example, garage [ɡaˈraːʒ]. Phonetic [ʒ] is common in Central and Southern Italy as an intervocalic allophone of /dʒ/: gente [ˈdʒɛnte] ‘people’ but la gente [laˈʒɛnte] ‘the people’, ragione [raˈʒoːne] ‘reason’.

Grammar[edit]

Italian grammar is typical of the grammar of Romance languages in general. Cases exist for personal pronouns (nominative, oblique, accusative, dative), but not for nouns.

There are two basic classes of nouns in Italian, referred to as genders, masculine and feminine. Gender may be natural (ragazzo ‘boy’, ragazza ‘girl’) or simply grammatical with no possible reference to biological gender (masculine costo ‘cost’, feminine costa ‘coast’). Masculine nouns typically end in -o (ragazzo ‘boy’), with plural marked by -i (ragazzi ‘boys’), and feminine nouns typically end in -a, with plural marked by -e (ragazza ‘girl’, ragazze ‘girls’). For a group composed of boys and girls, ragazzi is the plural, suggesting that -i is a general neutral plural. A third category of nouns is unmarked for gender, ending in -e in the singular and -i in the plural: legge ‘law, f. sg.’, leggi ‘laws, f. pl.’; fiume ‘river, m. sg.’, fiumi ‘rivers, m. pl.’, thus assignment of gender is arbitrary in terms of form, enough so that terms may be identical but of distinct genders: fine meaning ‘aim’, ‘purpose’ is masculine, while fine meaning ‘end, ending’ (e.g. of a movie) is feminine, and both are fini in the plural, a clear instance of -i as a non-gendered default plural marker. These nouns often, but not always, denote inanimates. There are a number of nouns that have a masculine singular and a feminine plural, most commonly of the pattern m. sg. -o, f. pl. -a (miglio ‘mile, m. sg.’, miglia ‘miles, f. pl.’; paio ‘pair, m. sg., paia ‘pairs, f. pl.’), and thus are sometimes considered neuter (these are usually derived from neuter Latin nouns). An instance of neuter gender also exists in pronouns of the third person singular.^[95]

Examples:^[96]

Definition	Gender	Singular Form	Plural Form
Son	Masculine	Figlio	Figli
House	Feminine	Casa	Case
Love	Masculine	Amore	Amori
Art	Feminine	Arte	Arti

Nouns, adjectives, and articles inflect for gender and number (singular and plural).

Like in English, common nouns are capitalized when occurring at the beginning of a sentence. Unlike English, nouns referring to languages (e.g. Italian), speakers of languages, or inhabitants of an area (e.g. Italians) are not capitalized.^[97]

There are three types of adjectives: descriptive, invariable and form-changing. Descriptive adjectives are the most common, and their endings change to match the number and gender of the noun they modify. Invariable adjectives are adjectives whose endings do not change. The form changing adjectives «buono (good), bello (beautiful), grande (big), and santo (saint)» change in form when placed before different types of nouns. Italian has three degrees for comparison of adjectives: positive, comparative, and superlative.^[97]

The order of words in the phrase is relatively free compared to most European languages.^[93] The position of the verb in the phrase is highly mobile. Word order often has a lesser grammatical function in Italian than in English. Adjectives are sometimes placed before their noun and sometimes after. Subject nouns generally come before the verb. Italian is a null-subject language, so that nominative pronouns are usually absent, with subject indicated by verbal inflections (e.g. amo ‘I love’, ama ‘(s)he loves’, amano ‘they love’). Noun objects normally come after the verb, as do pronoun objects after imperative verbs, infinitives and gerunds, but otherwise pronoun objects come before the verb.

There are both indefinite and definite articles in Italian. There are four indefinite articles, selected by the gender of the noun they modify and by the phonological structure of the word that immediately follows the article. Uno is masculine singular, used before z (/ts/ or /dz/), s+consonant, gn (/ɲ/), or ps, while masculine singular un is used before a word beginning with any other sound. The noun zio ‘uncle’ selects masculine singular, thus uno zio ‘an uncle’ or uno zio anziano ‘an old uncle,’ but un mio zio ‘an uncle of mine’. The feminine singular indefinite articles are una, used before any consonant sound, and its abbreviated form, written un’, used before vowels: una camicia ‘a shirt’, una camicia bianca ‘a white shirt’, un’altra camicia ‘a different shirt’. There are seven forms for definite articles, both singular and plural. In the singular: lo, which corresponds to the uses of uno; il, which corresponds to the uses with consonant of un; la, which corresponds to the uses of una; l’, used for both masculine and feminine singular before vowels. In the plural: gli is the masculine plural of lo and l’; i is the plural of il; and le is the plural of feminine la and l‘.^[97]

There are numerous contractions of prepositions with subsequent articles. There are numerous productive suffixes for diminutive, augmentative, pejorative, attenuating, etc., which are also used to create neologisms.

There are 27 pronouns, grouped in clitic and tonic pronouns. Personal pronouns are separated into three groups: subject, object (which take the place of both direct and indirect objects), and reflexive. Second person subject pronouns have both a polite and a familiar form. These two different types of address are very important in Italian social distinctions. All object pronouns have two forms: stressed and unstressed (clitics). Unstressed object pronouns are much more frequently used, and come before a verb conjugated for subject verb (La vedi. ‘You see her.’), after (in writing, attached to) non-conjugated verbs (vedendola ‘seeing her’). Stressed object pronouns come after the verb, and are used when emphasis is required, for contrast, or to avoid ambiguity (Vedo lui, ma non lei. ‘I see him, but not her’). Aside from personal pronouns, Italian also has demonstrative, interrogative, possessive, and relative pronouns. There are two types of demonstrative pronouns: relatively near (this) and relatively far (that). Demonstratives in Italian are repeated before each noun, unlike in English.^[97]

There are three regular sets of verbal conjugations, and various verbs are irregularly conjugated. Within each of these sets of conjugations, there are four simple (one-word) verbal conjugations by person/number in the indicative mood (present tense; past tense with imperfective aspect, past tense with perfective aspect, and future tense), two simple conjugations in the subjunctive mood (present tense and past tense), one simple conjugation in the conditional mood, and one simple conjugation in the imperative mood. Corresponding to each of the simple conjugations, there is a compound conjugation involving a simple conjugation of «to be» or «to have» followed by a past participle. «To have» is used to form compound conjugation when the verb is transitive («Ha detto», «ha fatto»: he/she has said, he/she has made/done), while «to be» is used in the case of verbs of motion and some other intransitive verbs («È andato», «è stato»: he has gone, he has been). «To be» may be used with transitive verbs, but in such a case it makes the verb passive («È detto», «è fatto»: it is said, it is made/done). This rule is not absolute, and some exceptions do exist.

Words[edit]

Conversation[edit]

Note: the plural form of verbs could also be used as an extremely formal (for example to noble people in monarchies) singular form (see royal we).

English (inglese)	Italian (italiano)	Pronunciation
Yes	Sì	(listen) /ˈsi/
No	No	(listen) /ˈnɔ/
Of course!	Certo! / Certamente! / Naturalmente!	/ˈtʃɛrto/ /ˌtʃertaˈmente/ /naturalˈmente/
Hello!	Ciao! (informal) / Salve! (semi-formal)	/ˈtʃao/
Cheers!	Salute!	/saˈlute/
How are you?	Come stai? (informal) / Come sta? (formal) / Come state? (plural) / Come va? (general, informal)	/ˌkomeˈstai/; /ˌkomeˈsta/ /ˌkome ˈstate/ /ˌkome va/
Good morning!	Buongiorno! (= Good day!)	/ˌbwɔnˈdʒorno/
Good evening!	Buonasera!	/ˌbwɔnaˈsera/
Good night!	Buonanotte! (for a good night sleeping) / Buona serata! (for a good night awake)	/ˌbwɔnaˈnɔtte/ /ˌbwɔna seˈrata/
Have a nice day!	Buona giornata! (formal)	/ˌbwɔna dʒorˈnata/
Enjoy the meal!	Buon appetito!	/ˌbwɔn‿appeˈtito/
Goodbye!	Arrivederci (general) / Arrivederla (formal) / Ciao! (informal)	(listen) /arriveˈdertʃi/
Good luck!	Buona fortuna! (general)	/ˌbwɔna forˈtuna/
I love you	Ti amo (between lovers only) / Ti voglio bene (in the sense of «I am fond of you», between lovers, friends, relatives etc.)	/ti ˈamo/; /ti ˌvɔʎʎo ˈbɛne/
Welcome [to…]	Benvenuto/-i (for male/males or mixed) / Benvenuta/-e (for female/females) [a / in…]	/benveˈnuto//benveˈnuti//benveˈnuta/ /benveˈnute/
Please	Per favore / Per piacere / Per cortesia	(listen) /per faˈvore/ /per pjaˈtʃere/ /per korteˈzia/
Thank you!	Grazie! (general) / Ti ringrazio! (informal) / La ringrazio! (formal) / Vi ringrazio! (plural)	/ˈɡrattsje/ /ti rinˈɡrattsjo/
You are welcome!	Prego!	/ˈprɛɡo/
Excuse me / I am sorry	Mi dispiace (only «I am sorry») / Scusa(mi) (informal) / Mi scusi (formal) / Scusatemi (plural) / Sono desolato («I am sorry», if male) / Sono desolata («I am sorry», if female)	/ˈskuzi/; /ˈskuza/; /mi disˈpjatʃe/
Who?	Chi?	/ki/
What?	Che cosa? / Cosa? / Che?	/kekˈkɔza/ or /kekˈkɔsa/ /ˈkɔza/ or /kɔsa/ /ˈke/
When?	Quando?	/ˈkwando/
Where?	Dove?	/ˈdove/
How?	Come?	/ˈkome/
Why / Because	Perché	/perˈke/
Again	Di nuovo / Ancora	/di ˈnwɔvo/; /anˈkora/
How much? / How many?	Quanto? / Quanta? / Quanti? / Quante?	/ˈkwanto/
What is your name?	Come ti chiami? (informal) / Qual è il suo nome? (formal) / Come si chiama? (formal)	/ˌkome tiˈkjami/ /kwal ˈɛ il ˌsu.o ˈnome/
My name is…	Mi chiamo…	/mi ˈkjamo/
This is…	Questo è… (masculine) / Questa è… (feminine)	/ˌkwesto ˈɛ/ /ˌkwesta ˈɛ/
Yes, I understand.	Sì, capisco. / Ho capito.	/si kaˈpisko/ /ɔkkaˈpito/
I do not understand.	Non capisco. / Non ho capito.	(listen) /non kaˈpisko/ /nonˌɔkkaˈpito/
Do you speak English?	Parli inglese? (informal) / Parla inglese? (formal) / Parlate inglese? (plural)	(listen) /parˌlate inˈɡleːse/ (listen) /ˌparla inˈɡlese/
I do not understand Italian.	Non capisco l’italiano.	/non kaˌpisko litaˈljano/
Help me!	Aiutami! (informal) / Mi aiuti! (formal) / Aiutatemi! (plural) / Aiuto! (general)	/aˈjutami/ /ajuˈtatemi/ /aˈjuto/
You are right/wrong!	(Tu) hai ragione/torto! (informal) / (Lei) ha ragione/torto! (formal) / (Voi) avete ragione/torto! (plural)
What time is it?	Che ora è? / Che ore sono?	/ke ˌora ˈɛ/ /ke ˌore ˈsono/
Where is the bathroom?	Dov’è il bagno?	(listen) /doˌvɛ il ˈbaɲɲo/
How much is it?	Quanto costa?	/ˌkwanto ˈkɔsta/
The bill, please.	Il conto, per favore.	/il ˌkonto per faˈvore/
The study of Italian sharpens the mind.	Lo studio dell’italiano aguzza l’ingegno.	/loˈstudjo dellitaˈljano aˈɡuttsa linˈdʒeɲɲo/
Where are you from?	Di dove sei? (general, informal)/ Di dove è? (formal)	/di dove ssˈɛi/ /di dove ˈɛ/
I like	Mi piace (for one object) / Mi piacciono (for multiple objects)	/mi pjatʃe/ /mi pjattʃono/

Question words[edit]

English	Italian[97][96]	IPA
what (adj.)	che	/ke/
what (standalone)	cosa	/ˈkɔza/, /ˈkɔsa/
who	chi	/ki/
how	come	/ˈkome/
where	dove	/ˈdove/
why, because	perché	/perˈke/
which	quale	/ˈkwale/
when	quando	/ˈkwando/
how much	quanto	/ˈkwanto/

Time[edit]

English	Italian[97][96]	IPA
today	oggi	/ˈɔddʒi/
yesterday	ieri	/ˈjɛri/
tomorrow	domani	/doˈmani/
second	secondo	/seˈkondo/
minute	minuto	/miˈnuto/
hour	ora	/ˈora/
day	giorno	/ˈdʒorno/
week	settimana	/settiˈmana/
month	mese	/ˈmeze/, /ˈmese/
year	anno	/ˈanno/

Numbers[edit]

English	Italian	IPA
one hundred	cento	/ˈtʃɛnto/
one thousand	mille	/ˈmille/
two thousand	duemila	/ˌdueˈmila/
two thousand (and) twenty (2020)	duemilaventi	/dueˌmilaˈventi/
one million	un milione	/miˈljone/
one billion	un miliardo	/miˈljardo/
one trillion	mille miliardi	/ˈmilleˈmiˈljardi/

Days of the week[edit]

English	Italian	IPA
Monday	lunedì	/luneˈdi/
Tuesday	martedì	/marteˈdi/
Wednesday	mercoledì	/ˌmerkoleˈdi/
Thursday	giovedì	/dʒoveˈdi/
Friday	venerdì	/venerˈdi/
Saturday	sabato	/ˈsabato/
Sunday	domenica	/doˈmenika/

Months of the year[edit]

English	Italian	IPA
January	gennaio	/dʒenˈnajo/
February	febbraio	/febˈbrajo/
March	marzo	/ˈmartso/
April	aprile	/aˈprile/
May	maggio	/ˈmaddʒo/
June	giugno	/ˈdʒuɲɲo/
July	luglio	/ˈluʎʎo/
August	agosto	/aˈɡosto/
September	settembre	/setˈtɛmbre/
October	ottobre	/otˈtobre/
November	novembre	/noˈvɛmbre/
December	dicembre	/diˈtʃɛmbre/[98]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

External links[edit]

• Salvatore Battaglia (1961–2002). «Grande dizionario della lingua italiana. Prototipo edizione digitale». UTET.
• Il Nuovo De Mauro (in Italian)
• Italian language at Curlie
• Swadesh list in English and Italian
• Italian proverbs
• «Learn Italian», BBC

Discover the Secrets of the Italian Language

Italian is a fascinating language that everyone knows of at least a little. Thanks to the popularity of Italian food, the vastness of Italian art, and the importance of Italian culture, everyone knows at least a few words of Italian. But, there’s so much more this beautiful language. Discover key facts about Italian, as well as its history and modern grammar here.

Whether you’re just interested in the language or you want to go on an “Eat-Pray-Love” kind of journey to Rome, you need to learn Italian. Even a few words can help you out with the locals when you’re in Italy. So, choose the best language learning platform to learn the most useful Italian phrases before your trip.

If Julia Roberts could learn it, so can you.

Overview of the Italian Language

Italian is a Romance language. That means that its roots go back to Vulgar Latin. So, it’s closely related to French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian.

Unlike most of the Romance languages, Italian remained mostly spoken in Europe. There are 68 million Italian speakers worldwide. Most of them people live in Italy. Italian is the official language of Italy, San Marino, and Vatican City. It’s also one of the four official languages of Switzerland. Additionally, Italian is also an official language at a regional level in Slovenia and Croatia. And we can’t forget the 500,000 Italian Americans living in the United States.

Italian Dialects

Italy is a land of a lot of regional dialects. And the unification of these dialects is the history of the Italian language. Overall, Italian belongs to the Italo-Dalmatian branch of the Romance languages. But, there is more than one kind of Italian in Italy.

Each region has its own distinct dialect. Nowadays, these are reduced to accents. But, throughout its history, Italian dialects were much more diverse.

Today, what we call Italian is Standard Italian of the Tuscan, and more specifically of the Florentine dialect. This is thanks to Italy’s vernacular literary tradition. That means that the literature was written in Italian instead of Latin. But, more on that later.

Brief History of Italian

When the Roman Empire occupied Italian lands, the language they spoke was Vulgar Latin. As the Romans conquered Europe, they spread their language. This is why there are various Romance languages along the Western parts of Europe.

But, Italian was divided into different languages (dialects) across the peninsula. It wasn’t until the 13th century when the first cases of Standard Italian started to grow.

How Literature Made Italian

Usually, a country’s literature is defined by its language. But, for Italian, it was the other way around. In the 14th century, Dante Alighieri wrote the Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia). This piece of text was written in the Florentine dialect of Italian mixed with Latin. But, despite the different regional dialects, Divine Comedy reached all corners of Italy. Every literate person read it, and Italian began to unify the people through literature.

Poets like Petrarch and Boccaccio further emphasized the importance of Italian (and especially the Florentine dialect) in literature. This small step came to full fruition in the 19th century.

Alessandro Manzoni wrote a defining piece of Italian literature called The Betrothed. This was the first novel written fully in Italian. Since the writing language of Italian was the Florentine dialect, it became one of the most important novels of Italy. In the 19th century, the historical states of Italy unified into a single country. Thanks to Manzoni’s efforts, the Florentine dialect became the official Italian language.

At the time of unification, the majority of Italians didn’t speak Italian. Only an estimated 2.5-10% of the population spoke the Florentine dialect. That’s because in the 19th century most people were illiterate, or weren’t exposed to that accent.

Unifying the linguistically diverse nation became one of Italian’s main function.

Today, everyone in Italy speaks Italian of course. But, there are still dialects and regional accents.

What’s Italian Like?

Italian has a truly beautiful sound to it. It’s an incredibly musical language. That’s why Italian is actually the language of musical notations and nomenclature. Words like “tempo”, “soprano” and “staccato” may be familiar to you.

The musicality of Italian comes partially from its intonation. Usually, every penultimate (second-to-last) syllable is stressed in every word.

The Italian Alphabet and Pronunciation

English native learners will be glad to hear that Italian uses the exact same alphabet as English does. But, it’s actually a little shorter than 26 letters.

The Italian alphabet has 21 letters. The letters J, K, W, X and Y don’t appear in any Italian words. But, you may see them in loanwords and English names. Italian has 5 vowels: a, e, i, o, and u. Of these, e and o have two different ways of pronouncing them. We generally refer to these as open and closed sounds. This varies by dialect as well.

The pronunciation of Italian letters is a little different than in the English alphabet. Here are the most crucial differences in how Italians pronounce certain letters.

• c: ch (like in chat) before i and e, k (like in cat) everywhere else
• g: soft g (like in magic) before i and e, hard g (like in ground) everywhere else
• z: ts sound (like in tsunami)
• r: rolled r (also known as a trilla)
• s: pronounced as z
• h: the h is usually silent

Diphthongs in the Italian Language

Diphthongs are a combination of two letters that create a specific sound when they’re together. Italian has a few diphthongs you should know when you’re pronouncing Italian words. When you see these letter combinations in Italian, this is how you need to say them.

Italian Diphthongs	How They Sound	How to Pronounce Them	Example
gl	throatal l sound	like ll in million	gli (the)
gn	voiced palatal nasal n	like ny in Kenya	gnocchi (gnocchi)
ch	always k	like cat	cheto (quiet)
gh	always hard g	like ground	ghepardo (cheetah)
sc	sh before i and e,  sk everywhere else	like show and  like sky	scola (drain) scala (ladder)

Italian Sentence Structure

Learning about grammar is rarely fun. Luckily, learning the Italian sentence structure is fairly easy. It’s the same word order as English for simple sentences. It’s SVO (subject-verb-object) for both languages.

• Lucia eats a pizza. – Lucia mangia una pizza.

Lucia is the subject of the sentence because she does the action. The verb (eats) is the action, and “an apple” is the object. An interesting feature of the Italian language is that most words end in a vowel.

In complex sentences, the subject pronoun can be dropped. You only really need it to emphasize or clarify the subject of your sentence.

Verbs in the Italian Language

Italian verbs belong to one of three categories: -are, -ere, or -ire. These represent the ending of the verbs in the infinitive form. “-are” verbs are regular, but “-ere” and “-ire” are often irregular.

There are 14 tenses in the Italian language. These vary based on the time and situation of the meaning of your sentence. Simple tenses in Italian are fairly straightforward. You always need to conjugate the verb to fit the pronoun and the tense.

In compound tenses, you need the help of auxillary verbs to express what you want to say. The verbs you may use are avere (to have) or essere (to be). This sounds like a very complicated grammatical rule. But, other Romance languages, such as French, have the same rule.

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Do Italian Nouns Have Genders?

Yes, Italian nouns have two genders: masculine and feminine. This is just like other Romance languages. But, in Italian, it’s easy to guess which gender a noun belongs to. Just look at the ending of the word. If the noun ends in:

• -o, it’s probably masculine
• -a, it’s probably feminine

If the word ends in -e, it could be either. Plural nouns usually end in -i for masculine or -e for feminine.

The gender of a noun is very important in Italian. It influences the article, adjective, and pronoun that’s connected to the noun.

The Grammar of Italian Articles in the Language

Italian articles need to reflect the gender and the number of the noun they’re attached to. 

Definite Articles in Italian

There are 7 different types of definite articles in Italian:

	Masculine	Feminine
Singular	il / l’ / lo	la / l’
Plural	i / gli	le

If the noun begins with a vowel, s+consonant, or a z, things change. There are special definite articles in Italian that you need to use in the following situations:

• l’: masculine or feminine before a vowel
• lo: masculine before s+consonant or z
• gli: masculine plural before vowel, s+conosonant, z, or gn

Here are examples of all the different Italian definite articles:

• il pane – the bread (masculine singular)
• la pizza – the pizza (feminine singular)
• i pani – the breads (masculine plural)
• le pizze – the pizzas (feminine plural)
• l’ape – the bee (feminine singular)
• le api – the bees (feminine plural)
• l’albero – the tree (masculine singular)
• gli albero – the trees (masculine plural)
• lo scienziato – the scientist (masculine singular)

Italian Indefinite Articles

Indefinite articles in Italian are a little bit easier. There are only 4 different kinds. You need to match the indefinite article in Italian to the gender and the starting letter of the noun. 

• feminine: una / un’ with vowel
• masc: un / uno with s+consonant or z

Italian Adjectives

In Italian, adjectives need to match the gender and the number of the noun as well. But, the most interesting this about Italian adjectives isn’t the form they take. It’s their placement in a sentence.

Italian adjectives can come before or after a noun. If the adjective is strictly factual (denotative), it comes after the noun.

• The blue sky. – Il cielo azzurro.

Azurro means blue, and it’s a fact that the sky is blue. So, it comes after the noun. 

If the adjectives imply something (connotative, functional), it comes before.

• The big ball. – La grande palla.

Big is a connotative adjective. It’s relative, so it comes in front of the noun in Italian. Occasionally, some adjectives can come before or after a noun. But, the meaning changes when that happens.

Interestingly, when there’s a definite article in front of a noun as well as a functional adjective, the adjective comes between the article and the noun. Let’s look at an example with the different forms of the possessive adjective for “my” in Italian.

• il mio cibo – my food (masculine singular)
• la mia torta – my cake (feminine singular)
• i miei biscotti – my biscuits (masculine plural)
• le mie ricette – my recipes (feminine plural)

As you can see, the placement of adjectives within a sentence matters in Italian. But, you also have to pay attention to use the correct forms of the adjectives according to gender and number.

Italian Numbers

It’s not difficult to learn how to count in Italian. Here are the first ten numbers in the Italian counting system.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
uno	due	tre	quattro	cinque	sei	sette	otto	nove	dieci

The Importance of Italian Culture

Learning to speak Italian is definitely worth it. It’s the 6th most studied language in the world. So, for a language that’s not “only” spoken by 68 million people in Europe, how can that be?

Italian culture is one of the most important and fascinating in the world. For example, Italians gave the names for music notations. The coffee you drink probably has an Italian name. And let’s not forget the marvelous Italian cuisine. Whether it’s pasta, pizza, or a bellini you’re craving, Italy is where it originated. 

Ultimately, visiting Italy is an incredible motivation to learn the language. If you’re planning to travel to Italy, it’s best to familiarize yourself with at least some of the language. Luckily, learning Italian isn’t difficult at all.

Is Italian an Easy Language to Learn?

Italian is one of the easiest languages to learn for native English speakers. The United States Foreign Service Institute ranked it in Category I. This means that learners could easily reach fluency in Italian, just like for French and Italian. It would take an estimated 600 hours of study to reach Italian proficiency.

But, that’s just an estimate. With the best learning resources, you can significantly decrease the time you spend studying a language. 

Learn Italian with the Best Language App

So, how can you learn Italian is the easiest and fastest way? The answer is with OptiLingo. This app lets you study the most common and useful Italian vocabulary. Those are the same words that real Italian locals use every day. So, don’t waste your time trying to learn unnecessary words.

OptiLingo also makes you speak the language. Instead of typing, you can really focus on the skill that gets you to fluency. When the time comes, you’ll have no fears about speaking to the locals in Italian. To achieve your dreams of speaking Italian download OptiLingo!