Italian has always held a special allure for me. Italy itself, with its breathtaking landscapes, rich history, and vibrant culture, captivated me from the moment I first traveled there. Hitchhiking through the country, relying on my somewhat shaky Spanish to communicate, I was immediately struck by the warmth of the people, the incredible food, and the sheer beauty of everything around me. It quickly became clear: I needed to learn Italian.
Over the years, I’ve explored various resources and methods to learn Italian, and I want to share my personal journey and what I’ve found to be the most effective approaches. This is my take on the best way to learn the Italian language, based on my own experiences.
My Early Italian Learning Methods: A Start with Linguaphone
My first foray into learning Italian involved the Linguaphone series, a popular at-home language course. While these courses can be quite expensive, in retrospect, the core components – the text, audio recordings, and a glossary – are the most valuable elements. Personally, I found the comprehension exercises, designed to be completed before and after reading the text, to be somewhat disruptive and unnecessary, even detracting from the enjoyment of the learning process.
Instead of diligently completing the exercises, I focused on repeatedly reading the texts and listening to the accompanying audio. This was about three decades ago, long before I consciously understood the importance of repetitive listening and reading for vocabulary acquisition. However, even then, I instinctively grasped that repeated exposure was key to language learning.
I’ve never been a fan of bilingual books where the Italian text is presented alongside the English translation. For me, this method is inefficient. My learning style is more direct; when I encounter a word I don’t know, I want to quickly and efficiently find its meaning without having to scan through a parallel English text.
In the past, this meant using readers equipped with glossaries. As I’ve mentioned before in the context of learning German, these were invaluable tools. Books like Prime Letture Italiane Per Stranieri by Armida Roncari were excellent resources. However, glossaries do have limitations. Sometimes, the specific word you’re looking for simply isn’t included. Today, thankfully, online dictionaries and innovative language learning tools like LingQ have largely rendered these types of readers obsolete, offering a much more efficient way to look up words instantly.
Leveraging Language Connections: The Advantage of “Freebie Italian”
One significant advantage for English speakers learning Italian, especially if you have any background in French or Spanish, is the wealth of “freebie” vocabulary. The Romance languages share significant linguistic roots, meaning many words in Italian will sound and look familiar.
While some people emphasize the challenges of “false friends,” words that appear similar in different languages but have different meanings, I find these to be a minor hurdle. Yes, there are occasional false friends, and you might use a word incorrectly at times. However, these mistakes are quickly corrected through context and further learning. The sheer volume of shared vocabulary far outweighs the occasional confusion caused by false friends, making it a considerable benefit for learners.
Mastering Italian Grammar for Fluency
Grammar is a crucial foundation for any language, and Italian is no exception. I found Olga Ragusa’s Essential Italian Grammar to be an incredibly helpful resource. I still refer back to it regularly. Italian pronouns, in particular, can be challenging for English speakers as they differ significantly from what we are accustomed to. I found it beneficial to review the grammar rules in this book and then actively look for examples of these grammatical structures while reading and listening to Italian content. This active reinforcement helped solidify my understanding.
Immersing Yourself in Italian Audiobooks
A major turning point in my Italian learning journey was discovering Il Narratore. This small audiobook publisher, based near Verona, produces a wonderful collection of Italian audiobooks. Their rendition of I Promessi Sposi, a classic of Italian literature, is particularly outstanding. While this novel is often studied in Italian schools and can be considered tedious by some, especially Italians, I found it captivating. Set in a different century and country, it felt wonderfully exotic. The audiobook version by Il Narratore is beautifully produced, and I have vivid memories of jogging in Palm Springs, completely engrossed in I Promessi Sposi.
Il Narratore also offers a fantastic audiobook version of Pinocchio. The beauty of using classics like these is the ease of finding digital texts online, often freely available at resources like Project Gutenberg. These digital texts can then be imported into platforms like LingQ, allowing you to seamlessly look up unfamiliar words and phrases while listening to the audio. This integrated approach makes learning much more accessible and enjoyable than struggling through traditional bilingual textbooks or even books with glossaries.
LingQ: A Modern Approach to Italian Vocabulary Acquisition
My journey with Italian has been ongoing, and while I’ve made significant progress, I’m still striving to expand my vocabulary. For instance, I aspire to read Umberto Eco novels in Italian, but I still encounter too many unfamiliar words. In the past, I would attempt to read them, underlining numerous words with the intention of looking them up later, an intention I rarely followed through on. This is where LingQ becomes an invaluable tool. It allows me to instantly look up and save new words and phrases directly within the text I’m reading.
Let me illustrate how I’ve used LingQ for Italian. Looking at my profile activity, you can see that I currently know 22,236 Italian words. My activity was particularly high in 2008 and has continued at various points since then.
Examining my LingQs created, which are the words and phrases I’ve actively looked up and saved, the number is around 5,000. This indicates that the majority of my known vocabulary comes from words I encountered in context and understood without needing to look them up. LingQ tracks your vocabulary level automatically as you engage with content, identifying words you know and highlighting new words.
Looking at the volume of text I’ve read in Italian on LingQ, it’s substantial, although I’ve also done a significant amount of reading outside of the platform. Back in 2013, for example, I read over 61,000 words on LingQ, which is a considerable amount of exposure.
Analyzing the growth of my known words over time, the most rapid increase occurred initially, followed by a more gradual, steady growth. My activity in recent years has been less intensive, but the foundation is there.
My Italian Language Goals: Continuous Improvement
Currently, I can communicate in Italian, but not to the level I aspire to. My comprehension is good, but when I pick up an Italian book, I still encounter words I don’t know. My goal is to improve my reading fluency. If I weren’t currently focused on learning Arabic and Persian, I would dedicate more time to further enhancing my Italian, as I would with many other languages I’ve studied.
I’ve brought my Italian to a point where it is distinctly Italian, not just “semi-Spanish,” though it’s not yet as fluent as I would like. If I had the opportunity or need to use Italian more regularly, perhaps by spending time in Italy or immersing myself in the language for a month, I am confident I could elevate my level significantly. I would estimate my current level to be a somewhat rusty B2, which I believe I could readily improve to a stronger B2 or even C1. Reaching a C1 level in all my target languages is a long-term aspiration, even if it remains a challenging goal.
In conclusion, the best way to learn Italian, in my experience, is a multifaceted approach that prioritizes immersion through reading and listening, leverages language similarities, and utilizes effective tools like LingQ for vocabulary building. It’s a journey of continuous learning and refinement, and I encourage anyone passionate about Italian to embark on their own language learning adventure.
