Introduction

I love to communicate with people. Simple communication has the ability to break down
huge walls of separation and remind us all how similar we are. If youve ever been to the zoo
and engaged in a pantomime conversation with an orangutan, you know just what I mean.
(Please tell me Im not the only weirdo who does that!)
But were all different, too, and communication also allows us to learn from each other, and
to share with each other the things that make us all different. Communication made it
possible for the Romans to assimilate the cultures they conquered, and it made possible all
of the adventures of Marco Polo.
I am fascinated by the many ways we living beings learn to communicate. Different cultures
in different parts of the world invent languages with different pronunciation, different sounds,
and different grammar, with elaborate and elegant syntax, each completely different from the
other. Take away their voices or their hearing and they invent a sign language. Take away
several senses and they invent morse code.
And were not so special. Dogs communicate through their barking. Bees communicate by
using an elaborate mid-air dance. Ive even read recently that scientists believe plants
communicate with each other. I would love to know what they were saying!
Ill bet its something like gosh, Im so sick of this rain, or Im hungry, or something
equally mundane. Im sure of it, because Ive invested time in learning several languages and
anxiously began to communicate with new people from interesting cultures in strange, far-

away places, only to find out that theyre all just saying the same things we are. Were all the
same.
But theyre also saying some interesting things that no one I know is saying here. Learning to
communicate with people from another culture allows you to learn about the things they eat.
It enables you to understand and appreciate their music. It gives you the tools to learn their
dance, their sports, their jokes, their superstitions. And each new language is like a
completely different set of linguistic tools to be used by best storytellers: Neruda, Pushkin,
Baudelaire, et al.
Ill admit Im greedy. I want it all. I want to speak every language so I can experience
everything this earth has to offer culturally. Thats why I began learning a new language every
year. And in doing so, Ive learned a lot about how to learn languages, and thats why I
started my web site (www.yearlyglot.com) and its why Ive put so much work into writing
this ebook.
I want to help others to learn. I want you to benefit from my frustrations when things havent
worked, and my discoveries when they have worked out well, so that you, too, can learn a
new language in one year or less.

The power of a year

Why a year? Why not more? Why not less? It seems like an arbitrary time period. You might
have attended language classes for several years in school and never become fluent. So I
must be crazy to say I can do it in just one year, right?

Perhaps you know someone who learned a language in six months. Maybe you know about
that guy who learns in three months. Maybe you saw a CD set at the book store that
promises fluency in 30 days, or 24 hours, or who knows what. So, maybe you think a year is
too long, and Im too slow.
Well, the good news is, you dont have to take the whole year. If you do it faster, thats great.
In fact, I hope youll write me an email when youre done, and tell me about your results.
The reason I have chosen a year for myself, and why I recommend that you do the same, is
because one year is a short enough time span to make you stay motivated but long enough
that you dont have to give up the rest of your life in order to succeed.
Its easy for an unmarried guy with no kids to tell you how to learn a language in a few
months or weeks. But with a full-time job, and responsibilities at home, its hard to imagine
moving to another country and stopping all English-speaking activities. And you probably
cant begin to imagine where youd find the time to study every night.
The nice thing about a year is that it gives you enough time to do things right, no matter who
you are. Instead of rushing and cramming, you can be relaxing and learning. If youve got a
full schedule, you can still learn a language in one year. If youve got a family and a job and
all the responsibilities that come with them, theres still enough time for you to be successful.
A lot can happen in a year. In one year, the earth travels 150 million kilometers around the
sun. In one year, the average person will sleep almost 3000 hours. In one year, the average
American will drive more than 12,000 miles, drink nearly 80 gallons of coffee, consume more
than 150 pounds of sugar, and spend almost 3,000 hours talking on the phone!

During all of that, I think theres time to learn a language. In fact, I dont think it, I know it.
And I know it because I do it. Every year, I prove that it is possible to learn a language in one
year. And then the next year I start over and prove it again.
But while a year is a long time, its also a short time. And thats part of the power of a year.
Its long enough to do these things, but not so long that you dont have to put in effort. In
order to succeed in one year, you have to commit to the task.
You have to find the time for learning, even if its only a half-hour a day, or an hour every two
days. You have to commit to spending the time reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The
point of having a time limit is that you cant just sit back and keep putting it off. You cant
succeed in one year if you dont make steady progress all year long.

But it doesnt have to be hard work!

If that last paragraph scared you, I have good news. Learning a foreign language isnt hard,
and it doesnt have to be hard work. In fact, it doesnt have to be work at all. Yes, you have
to put in the time, but it isnt going to require any more time from you. You dont have to give
up the things you do, and you dont have to squeeze more time out of your already busy and
difficult schedule.

Ill explain more about this as you read. In later chapters, Ill explain why I believe study is
actually bad, and Ill also give detailed descriptions of the many things you can do to learn to
speak a new language fluently without spending your time doing boring, frustrating study.

What is fluency?
One big mistake that people make with their goals is that of not being specific enough. This
is especially troublesome with language learning, because people lazily fall back onto a word
like fluent without ever considering what fluency actually means.
Defining your goals clearly is extremely important, because if you dont have a clear picture
of what you want to attain, you can never really be sure that youve succeeded! How do you
know when you are fluent? And if youre not, how do you know what you need to do in order
to get there?
Im not going to define fluency for you. If youre reading this, you want to speak Italian. But
thats all I know. This is your goal, not mine, and I dont know if you want to learn Italian so
you can watch the Godfather without subtitles, or if youre doing it because you want to
understand opera music, or if you want to visit Italy for a few weeks, or if you want to know
what Uncle Tony is saying about you when you go home to see the family in New Jersey at
Christmas.

Everyones goals are different. What is important is that you take the time to specify. In fact,
you should write down your goals. Write a language-learning journal, or start a blog to track
your progress. Whether you keep it to yourself, or share it with your friends, the important
thing is taking the time to define your goals and honestly assess your progress.
The key to success is data. So create some! If your goal is to live in Italy, define what youll
do there. Do you want to understand television shows? News programs? If your intention is
to enjoy Fellinis films as they were intended, or to enjoy the writing of Rossinis operas, write
that down. If you want to read Collodis Pinocchio or Dantes Inferno in their original Italian,
write that down.
Do you want to spend an evening with your Italian friends in New Jersey? Do you want to
impress your Italian boyfriends family? Do you want to call your grandmother in Italy and
talk for an hour? Do you have your eye on that Italian girl who moved in downstairs, and you
want to ask her out in Italian? I dont care what your motivation is this is your life and your
goal. Be honest, be detailed. Write it down!
Once youve defined your goal and you have a clear idea of what fluency will mean to you,
save it. Put it where it wont be lost. Put it where youll see it. If youre not too shy, put it on
your blog, or on your Facebook. If you are shy, tape it to your mirror, or stick it on your
refrigerator.

The point of this book

There is nothing contained in this ebook that cant be found for free anywhere on the
internet. In fact, most of it can be found right there on my web site! But at the same time,
this is not a collection of secret information that Ive been holding back. Its much more than
just a collection of all my blog posts.
Ive spent the last year searching and finding and gathering answers and information about
the Italian language, and about learning languages in general, and my blog represents that
work. But a year of disjointed thoughts collected on a topic isnt much better for you than if I
you had just gone and done all the work yourself.
The value of this ebook is that Ive put a great deal of time and work into gathering all of this
information into a single volume, and organizing it into a clear, concise, easy-to-understand
guide that I believe anyone could follow in order to become a fluent Italian speaker in less
than one year.

What not to do
I intend to spend the remainder of this book giving you advice, and telling you how you can
learn Italian, what to do, and how to do it. But before I get to all of that, I first want to start by
giving you advice on what I you should not do.
There is a huge industry built up around language learning. Millions of people want to learn a
foreign language, and that makes a ripe market for people who want to sell things to millions
of people. There are endless books, audio lessons, software programs, classes, videos,
interactive classrooms, virtual tutors, and ancillary products designed to do just one thing:
generate profits.
Yes, a small number of those products are actually helpful, but those are rare. Most people
get into the sale of products because they want to earn money. They create endless
products flashcards, dictionaries, calendars, games, smartphone apps, etc ostensibly
intended to help you learn a language, but often those products merely create the illusion of
learning. Remember, these products are designed to generate revenue, not results.
We humans suffer from a mental fallacy, upon which all of those money-hungry people in
that language learning industry are all to happy to prey. That fallacy from which we suffer is
our need to perceive action being taken and results being gained.
When people set out to accomplish a big task or a difficult goal, there is a tendency to rush
out and buy tons of books and products, and to take any and every opportunity to do

something that feels like learning. But in most cases, I believe that this tendency actually
works against us.
In order to explain, I need to first talk about how the human brain works.

The Triune Brain

In the 1960s, a neuroscientist named Paul MacLean formulated an idea called the Triune
Brain. To tell it in over-simplified terms, the idea describes how the human brain formed as a
result of evolution. Triune Brain Theory describes the brain in three parts: the reptilian brain,
the mammal brain, and the human brain.
The reptilian brain that developed earliest in our evolution manages repetitive tasks,
motor skills, and physical survival. This is the part of the brain that controls heartbeat and
breathing. Its obsessive and compulsive, and always active, even during deep sleep. The
reptilian brain is the oldest, and deepest-seated part of the brain, and its needs trump all
else.
The mammal brain those parts of the brain resulting from evolution as a mammal
manages emotion, instinct, fight-or-flight, sexual behavior, and long-term memory. All
emotion is generated in the mammal brain: happiness, sadness, fear, excitement, loyalty,
trust, belief, positivity, negativity.
Finally, the human brain those left and right hemispheres most highly-evolved only in the
heads of primates and humans makes up more than two-thirds of the contents of our

head, and provides us with such things as speech, reading, writing, logic, and pattern
recognition. All of those higher functions which make us human take place in that giant outer
layer of the brain.
Were not really concerned with the reptilian brain, but if you were paying attention to those
descriptions, you will have noticed that the human brain (the neocortex) is where our
language skills reside, whereas the mammal brain (the lymbic system) is where long-term
memory resides.
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but factual knowledge is short-term memory. And
so is language. All that studying people do all that work theyre doing every time they do
vocabulary lessons, or verb conjugation, or flashcards its all taking place in the neocortex
where memories just dont last very long. And thats why theyre always so frustrated with
learning.
If you look again at the description of the mammal brain, youll see that its completely
irrational! Its full of emotion. Think about that if the part of the brain that retains long-term
memory is irrational and emotional, why try to use logical methods to remember things?
Long-term memories are the result of strong emotion. They are, essentially, emotional
imprints on our brains. If you think of any moment from your past, chances are it had a
strong emotion tied to it. (Nobody ever remembers the day that nothing happened!)
So I think you can see that if you want to remember things long-term, you need to generate
emotion, and allow that emotion to imprint the memory. But the way that most people learn
is by studying tediously ad infinitum until they generate the emotions of boredom,

frustration, and disgust. Is it any wonder that language learning has such a low success
rate?

Pathways
Imagine that you are a farmer. You live in a farmhouse, and you work in a barn. The
farmhouse and the barn are separated by a big field covered in tall grass. Every morning you
have to walk to the barn and work all day, and every evening you have to walk back home.
When you first buy this property, this field is overgrown with tall grass, and you cant see
where youre going. You know youre walking in the right direction, but every step is brand
new. The path is slow and deliberate. You have to think with every step. The sights are new
and there is a lot to take in.
For the first few days or weeks, each trip between the barn and the farmhouse seems
difficult, and goes slow. But after a while, you start to recognize the same lump in the
ground, or the same stone along the way. Eventually, you start to find a familiar route, and
over time the steady traffic of your feet along the same route starts to wear a path.
At first the path is narrow, and you still have to pay attention to what youre doing. But over
months and years, eventually that path becomes clear so clear that you can easily follow
without paying attention. Your journey takes less time when the path is worn, and you can
easily follow it by habit.

These are the pathways in your mind. The electrical pulses firing around inside your head
start out by taking slow, deductive paths. But over time, by virtue of repetition, those
pathways fire more and more by habit, and less and less by deduction and conscious
thought.
When youve burned enough of those pathways from speaking and hearing and
understanding and using the Italian language, you will be fluent. But there is danger in
rushing to burn pathways, because not all pathways are equal!
Before you get started burning paths into your head, it is wise to take time to make sure
youre burning the straightest, fastest, most efficient and appropriate pathway you can. Yes,
by virtue of taking a path many times, you will get faster at doing it, but a long, winding path
is never as good as a short, straight path, no matter how fast you run. And undoing a bad
path once youve created it takes even more work.

The curse of constant translation

Many people try to learn by studying information. They make lists, or decks of flashcards,
containing words and translations, like this:
car -> la macchina
house -> la casa

But when you learn vocabulary out of context like this, you arent learning to associate a
word with its meaning. Instead, youre associating a word with another word. This is an
important difference to understand.
When an Italian looks at a car, they see una macchina, and they say la macchina. When an
English-speaker looks at a car, they see a car, and they say the car. But when an English
speaker who has learned in this way sees a car, he still thinks car, and then in his mind he
has to perform a car=macchina translation, before he can say la macchina.
The danger when youre going through the thought->word->translation process is that
youre burning a path thats twice as long! Think long and hard about this. The difference
sounds pretty small for one word, but people dont just learn one word this way, they try to
learn whole languages this way. And when you double the necessary time to understand or
use every word, you slow your comprehension and conversation potential by half!
Youll be forced to think twice as fast as everyone else, just to keep pace. Youll be drinking
tons of coffee in attempt to speed up your mind, just to keep up with everyone else. And
when you dont sleep well, or havent eaten, or when the coffee wears off, youll be so lost in
average conversations that youll just give up completely.
Worse, when youre constantly translating everything you hear, you cant internalize it and
feel it, they way you do in your native language. The result is that rather than reacting in a
natural way to what you hear, you will react in a technical and robotic way. When someone
asks come ti chiama?, your internal dialog will be oh, I know what that means! But when
someone asks you that question in your native language, your instinct is simply to answer.

I once knew a charming Russian lady who seemed to speak really good English. She could
tell a story and communicate, but whenever she was listening, she only said yes and
okay. It was obvious that she was translating in her head, because when I mentioned
something terrible that I had seen on the bus, other people in the room gasped, but this
charming little lady simply said, oh, yes, I understand.
In order to reach fluency, you need to get rid of that internal dialog and get to a place where
youre reacting in Italian they way that you react in your native language. Fluency is more
than comprehension. Its relating. Its feeling. Its experiencing the language.

You are what you do

In the book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of a museum that acquired fake artifacts.
The archeologists immediately recognized them as fakes, but they couldnt explain why.
They didnt actually know what made them fake. There was something missing, and they
knew it subconsciously even if it wasnt clear what that was.
The United States Secret Service, which is responsible for investigation and prevention of
counterfeiting of money, understands this principle as well. New money handlers are never
taught about counterfeit bills or instructed on what to look for. Instead, they spend all day
handling real money counting, sorting, etc and after a few days or weeks, a supervisor
slips in a counterfeit bill. Upon encountering the fake, that new employee is often unable to
explain why, but just instinctively knows that bill is wrong, and brings it to the supervisor.

When you watch sports, you often get to see athletes do amazing things. Sometimes you
cant help being amazed by how quickly they recognize an opponents stance, or position, or
understand a situation and react to it. Sometimes we call it instinct or intuition. But the
reality is that the players re-create these situations every day during practice, and they use
repetition to burn the expected response into their brain. By the time it happens on the field,
its nothing more than an automatic reaction.
Why am I telling you all of this? Well, theyre not just interesting stories, they actually
illustrate the importance of those brain pathways youve been forming. Doing something
over and over makes that thing very easy to do. It also makes other things harder to do. In
other words, repeatedly doing something the right way makes it easy and natural to do it the
right way, but repeatedly doing it the wrong way makes it very hard to do that thing any
other way but wrong.
In language learning, there are several things that people do which, I believe, help the learner
to strengthen wrong patterns and thus make it harder to do things correctly. Among those
bad things are word lists, flashcards, and vocabulary CDs. These items rely on memorizing
translations, rather than thoughts, and people who learn by these methods end up living in
permanent translation mode, as I described earlier.
You are what you do. Practicing translations of words will make you a word-by-word
translator. Likewise, practicing translation of sentences will make you a sentence-bysentence translator. Practicing flashcards will make you great at recognizing words or
phrases written on cards. Practicing vocabulary lists will make you good at vocabulary lists.

Its possible that all of these things could add up to making you a really formidable gameshow contestant. But being a walking dictionary does not make you a good speaker. In fact,
the argument Im making is that it will actually impair your ability to be a good speaker. Youll
find yourself in conversations, unable to recall a word until you can visualize the card, and
thats a very frustrating place to be!

Symbolic learning, and excuses

Many people begin their language learning experience by purchasing books and CDs, or by
enrolling in classes, or even by hiring a tutor. Often, these things turn out to be nothing more
than symbolic gestures. When you talk about the language or the learning, you can talk
about your book or your class, as if the fact of its existence is evidence of your commitment
to learning the language.
But in reality, these things often turn out to be nothing more than a scapegoat, a place for
you to lay the blame when you don't follow through, or don't make the progress you
expected, or just give up. People like to say things like "I wanted to learn, but I had a bad
teacher," or "I really tried, but I just can't understand this book."
Spending money is, more than anything else, symbolic. It is a mere act to demonstrate
interest, and a way to buy credibility. But true credibility is in the results. I don't trust another
person's books, or their collection of CDs, or their calendar of classes. I can tell more about

your commitment after speaking two sentences of Italian than I would ever learn from a look
at all those symbolic gestures.
You can't buy credibility. Don't waste your time and money buying excuses.

Impatience
I will close this chapter on what not to do with one last thing you should avoid: impatience.
This can be very difficult, because it's human nature to want everything right now. But you
can't be fluent in a day or a week.
Very often, when people begin their path toward learning a new language, they begin with a
lot of enthusiasm so their motivation is high. They anxiously read from lesson books or study
vocabulary lists or watch tv or listen to music, all with a big grin on their face from the
excitement of one day knowing a new language. But after only a few weeks of this high
intensity, they find the results aren't what they expected, and they "hit a wall." The results
aren't there yet, so the motivation burns out.
Theres a lot to know in a language, and all that information just keeps coming and never
stops. Its kind of like water running out of a hose. The important thing to remember is that
you can only sip from that hose! If you try to put your mouth around the end and swallow
everything, you will last one or two seconds and then end up spitting it all out and getting
nothing. (Go ahead, try it!)

But if you put your lips next to the hose and just sip from the water as it comes, youll find
that you can do that for a long time, and you will eventually get enough water to fill you up.
When you were impatient, you retained almost nothing, but when you were patient, you got
more than enough to fill you up! Thats how it has to be when learning a language.
Just remember, you didn't learn your native language in a few days or weeks. In fact, you
really didn't speak at all for almost two full years, in spite of being completely immersed.
Fortunately, it's not going to take you two years before you speak Italian, but you are not
going to be an expert in one month.
Pace yourself. You bought this book about becoming fluent in one year. So try to keep some
perspective... a year is actually a long time! And I promise, fluent or not, you'll be speaking
well soon enough.

Learning the basics

Before you can get started, the most important first step is to learn how to read. That starts
with learning the alphabet and the associated sounds. I'm going to describe those sounds
here to give you an idea about how to pronounce them, but it's really important to hear them
from an actual Italian speaker. If you don't know any Italians who can help you, it is always
easy to find helpful videos on YouTube.

The alphabet
The Italian alphabet is a Latin alphabet, and is very similar to that of English, but smaller and
much easier! There are 21 letters 5 vowels and 16 consonants. The letters J, K, W, X, and
Y are not used in Italian, though you may see them in names or words borrowed from other
languages.

Vowels
Note: Italian vowels do not have the long glide that we are used to in English. For example,
an English a comes out kind of like ay, with that little y sound at the end. You should try to
avoid this when speaking Italian.

a
An ah sound, like the a in the word want.

i
The ee sound made by the i in ring.

u
The oo sound made by the u in rude.

e
An eh sound, like the e in the word bed.

o
The oh sound made by the o in hole.

Vowels can also be accented. Vowels without the accent are known as le vocali lunghe,
meaning long vowels. When a vowel is accented, it is pronounced with a sharper attack and
a sudden ending. These stressed vowels are called le vocali corte, or short vowels.
I think the best way I can describe that is to think of the ha ha ha sound you make when
you laugh. You produce a strong burst of air, and then that air is cut off suddenly. This is
similar to the way you aspirate an accented Italian vowel.

Stressed, or short vowels can be formed in two ways: by adding an accent mark over the
vowel (ie, , , , , ), or by preceding it with an h. The letter h, as you will see below, is
silent, but it can cause the vowel following it to become stressed. Also note that sometimes,
especially with capitalized letters or letters at the ends of words, an apostrophe is often
added after the vowel, rather than using the accent mark above. For example is the same
as e.
Its nearly impossible to learn proper pronunciation by reading it from a written description.
You should take the time to listen to an Italian pronouncing these sounds so you can hear
the difference and learn to do it properly. The descriptions that follow are just to help you
understand what to listen for, and for a reference if, and when, you forget.

Consonants
b
The b sound made by the b in boy.

c
When followed by an e or an i, the combination ce or ci forms the ch sound, as in the word
chin.
In all other cases, the hard k sound made by the k in kin.

d
The d sound made by the d in dog.

f
The f sound made by the f in fast.

g
When followed by an e or an i, the combination ge or gi forms the j sound, as in the word
just.
When followed by an n, the combination gn forms the palatalized n sound made by the
combination ny in the word canyon.
When followed by an l, the combination gl forms a palatalized l sound made by the
combination li in the word battalion. This sound is often difficult for English speakers to
reproduce. It is made curling the tongue up toward the palate of the mouth while making an l
sound.
In all other cases, the hard g sound made by the g in gate.

h
Does not make a sound, but is used to modify surrounding letters.
The h is used after a c or a g, in order to retain the hard sound when preceding an e or an i,
such as in the word chianti (KYAN-tee) or spaghetti (spa-GET-tee).
When the h precedes a vowel (unless it is part of a ch or gh combination), the vowel
becomes shortened. (For example, ha would be pronounced like .) In this use, the h is
mostly found at the beginning of a word.

l
The l sound, as in long.

m
The m sound, as in man.

n
The n sounds, as in never.

p
Similar to the English p, as in purse, but more lightly aspirated. That is, a more subtle sound,
without the big burst of air behind it.

q
Always appears with a u following it. The qu combination produces the same kw sound as in
the English word quick.

r
A rolled r sound, just as you might find in Spanish or Russian.

s
When found between two vowels, produces a hard z sound, like the s in visor.
In all other cases, the soft s sound as the s in pasta.

t
The t sound, as in time.

v
The v sound, as in vocal.

z
A dz sound.

Doubled consonants
Unlike in English, where we glide across doubled consonants, Italians pronounce every
letter. Gliding over a letter can lead to situations where you are not understood, or even in
some cases, where you will say something different from what you intended! For example
the word penna means pen, but pena means pain, so youll want to be sure to
pronounce both ns when you ask someone to dammi la penna. You dont want them to
give you the pain!
If a consonant is doubled, it is pronounced twice. When you see the word tutto, you
pronounce it TUT-to. When you see the word bellissimo, you say bel-LEES-see-mo.
When you listen to an Italian speaker pronouncing these words, you can usually hear a slight
pause between the doubled letters.

Use (and correct) the words you already know

You already know several Italian words. You can use those to help you remember
pronunciation. For example, look at the following words, which Im sure you have already
seen before.

capuccino
ka-pooch-CHEE-no

machiatto
ma-kee-AHT-to

allegro
ahl-LEG-ro

chianti
KYAN-tee

spaghetti
spa-GET-tee

pistacchio
pee-STAHK-kee-yo

If youre like me, youve probably been saying these words wrong, as I was before I learned
Italian, but now that you know the simple rules of Italian pronunciation, you can correct that.
Now, as you read them correctly, notice how you already feel a little more Italian.

Phonics and word stress

Italian isnt a 100% phonetic language, but its very close. Once you understand the basic
rules of pronunciation, you will develop a feel for it, and youll be able to guess the correct
pronunciation of written words most of the time. Awareness of a handful of details will help
you tremendously toward that end:
Almost all Italian words end on a vowel, and in most cases that final vowel is not stressed.
If the final vowel is stressed, it will be written with an accent over the vowel. eg: cio, citt,
per
When a short vowel is marked with the accent mark, that syllable gets the stress. Short
vowels preceded by an h do not change the stress.
When there is no stressed vowel, word stress usually falls on the penultimate (second-tolast) syllable.
With verbs, the stress usually falls on the penultimate (second-to-last) syllable of the verb
form. Adding reflexive pronouns to a verb does not shift its stress. For example, for the verb

andare, the 2nd-person plural is andate, and in the command form andatevene, the stress
does not move with the addition of reflexive pronouns at the end.
Stress does move when adding diminutive, augmentative, and pejorative endings. eg:
stanco -> stancuccio. bella -> bellissima.
When an i precedes another vowel, it often works more like the glided English consonant y,
and often does not receive stress. eg: portafoglio, inizio, pommeriggio, aria, vecchia.

Practice
As you can see, the rules of Italian pronunciation are not very difficult. Its not 100%
phonetic, so you will find some words from time to time that dont follow these rules. But
more than 95% of the words you encounter probably will be phonetic, and easy to figure out
based on the rules you just learned.
Find YouTube videos of stories and narrations in Italian with the words printed on the screen.
Many Italian songs can be found with the lyrics displayed as the song plays. Get used to
proper pronunciation.
Then go practice! Get your hands on every bit of Italian text you can find and read it. Go to
Italian restaurants and read the menu items. Go to a grocery store or liquor store and read
every word on the label of a bottle of chianti. Read music. Read operas.

When you spend a few minutes thinking about it, it becomes pretty obvious that the Italian
language is all around you. But youve probably been saying things wrong. So take what you
now know about pronunciation and fix your mistakes. Find things to read, and read them.
Congratulations, youre on your way to speaking Italian.

The minimum you need to know

There are a few basic things you need to know, in order to survive in any language, such as
how to greet someone, how to ask where the restroom is, and how to say please and
thank you.
In this chapter you will find the ten things you need to know in order to survive in Italian. For
each item you will find a list of vocabulary related to that item. It is perfectly reasonable for
anyone to learn the vocabulary for each list in one or two days.
I think the best way to begin learning Italian is to spend a few weeks learning these words
and phrases of basic survival vocabulary. After completing this chapter you should already
be capable of handling yourself in basic situations in Italian.

Greetings
To begin with, you should know the standard hello and goodbye phrases. All around the
world, this is how conversations begin. Being able to greet someone in their language will at
least make them more willing to put up with you and your improvisational sign language as
you try to explain what youre trying to say!
Take one day to learn these words and phrases. Don't overdo it. If you get impatient and
move on to the next section, you will only make it harder to remember these things. Just

spend one day learning these phrases. And use them! When you meet a friend, greet them in
Italian. When you leave work, use an Italian farewell.

Welcome!
Benvenuto!

Hi!
Ciao!

Hello.
Buongiorno! or Salve!

Good morning.
Buongiorno.

Good day.
Buongiorno.

Good afternoon.
Buongiorno.

Good evening.
Buena sera.

Good night.
Buona notte.

Goodbye.
Arrivederci.

Bye!
Ciao!

See you later.

Ci vediamo.

Until later
A pi tardi.

You may have noticed that some of the words were repeated. Italian greetings are pretty
flexible and their meaning is derived somewhat from context. But thats good news for you,
because you have fewer new words to learn.
Most of these greetings are probably pretty familiar to you already. (Who hasnt heard
buongiorno before?) And if theyre familiar to you, theyre probably familiar to the people
around you. You can already use these words, even if youre not in Italy. Greet your friends

with a nice Ciao! or Buongiorno! and when you leave, say Arrivederci! Youre already
speaking Italian!

Courtesies
After greetings, the next thing to learn are common courtesies. Knowing the basic phrases
of courtesy will reveal to people that you are a polite person. This will be especially
important to do if youre a tourist in Italy with a limited vocabulary and you have to point and
grunt your way through your interaction. Again, take a day or two to learn these phrases,
and use them wherever you can.

Excuse me (more polite).

Scusi.

Excuse me (less formal).

Scusami.

Excuse me (as I pass).

(Con) permesso.

Im sorry.
Mi dispiace.

Please.
Per favore.

Please.
Prego.

Here is...
Ecco...

Here it is. (When giving or pointing to something.)

Eccolo!

Thank you.
Grazie.

Thanks a lot!
Grazie mille!

Thank you very much!

Molto grazie!

You are welcome.

Prego.

No problem.
Non c problema.

Cheers!
Salute!

Bless you! (after a sneeze)

Salute!

My name is
Mi chiamo

It is a pleasure to meet you.

un piacere conoscerla.

First, you will notice that we see three different ways of saying excuse me above. The first
two are a polite version and an informal version. You should only use the informal version
with friends, family, or people of your own age or younger. For strangers and elders, use the
more polite version. The third form (permesso) literally asks for permission, and is only said
when you are passing by someone.
Once again, these are all quite useful, and you can even use them in casual situations with
your non-Italian speaking friends. If you want someones attention, you can say scusi, and

theyll probably understand what you meant. When you reach past someone for the salt at
the table, you can say permesso, and even though they probably dont know that word,
theyll understand that youre apologizing for reaching in front of them. Saying salute after
someone sneezes is nice even if they dont know what the word means.
Even if you dont have any Italians around you, you can still use these words. Dont just read
lists of words and think youve learned something. You have to use it to remember it! Make a
point of using your greetings and courtesies throughout your day today and tomorrow.

Questions
Knowing question words makes you dangerous. This is the point at which you are capable
of asking horrible, grammatically ridiculous questions, and amazingly, getting answers!
Knowing greetings, courtesies, and questions, you can get help, ask directions, and even
buy things.

What?
Che?
Che cosa?
Cosa?

Who?
Chi?

How?
Come?

When?
Quando?

How much?
Quanto?

Which?
Quale?

Where?
Dove?

Whats your name?

Come si chiama?

What did you say?

Cosa hai detto?

How are you?

Come sta?

How old are you?

Quanti anni ha?

What are you doing?

Cosa fa?

Where is it?
Dov?

Where are you going?

Dove va?

When is it?
A che ora ?

How much does this cost?

Quanto costa questo?
You will notice that there were a few different ways to ask what. The question word che is
a versatile word, with several different uses. Often, to clear that up, Italians ask che cosa
(literally what thing) depending on the context of the situation. And as a more colloquial
form, sometimes theyll leave off the che and just ask cosa?

Answers to questions
Any discussion of questions would be incomplete without also pointing out a few ways that
questions can be answered. The following are just a few ways that you can say yes and no.

Yes.
S.

No.
No.

Maybe.
Forse.

Sure.
Certo.

Absolutely not!
Assolutamente no!
Try to find places where you can use these words. When you didnt hear someone, ask
Cosa hai detto? When someone invites you to dinner, say Certo! Spend a day or two
using these words, even if you only do it alone.

Descriptive words
Descriptive words can be, at the very least, ways to answer those question words when you
recognize that someone has asked them to you. But they can also be handy when it comes
to bargaining, or telling people how you feel. Once you learn these words, you are capable
of sharing opinions!

more
pi

less
meno

good / well
buono

bad / badly
malo

good / nice
bello

bad
cattivo

better
meglio

worse
peggiore

pretty
carino

ugly
brutto

warm / hot
caldo

cold
freddo

large
grosso

small
piccolo

high
alto

low
basso

long
lungo

short
corto

a bit
un po
This is a much shorter list than the last one. You should be able to learn all of these words in
one day, and then use them to describe the things around you.

Necessities
Once you know how to ask for things, its important to know the things youre likely to ask
for. This isnt meant to be a complete list, but it gives you an idea.

the airport
laeroporto

the hotel
lalbergo

the bank
la banca

the automatic teller machine

il bankomat

the police station

il posto di polizia

the pharmacy
la farmacia

the hospital
lospedale

the phone
il telefono

the restrooms
i servici

a bar
un locale

a cafe
un bar

a restaurant
un ristorante

a place to eat
un posto in cui mangiare

the metro
la metropolitana

the bus stop

la fermata dellautobus

a taxi
un tassi

the embassy
lambasciata

the consulate
il consolato

the school
la scuola

the university
luniversit

Asking for things

Here are some ways you might ask for something:

Im looking for
Cerco

I want
Voglio

I would like to go to
Vorrei andare a

I need
Ho bisogno di

Where is the nearest ?

Dov pi vicino?

Where do I find ?
Dove si trova ?

How do I get to on foot?

Come si arriva in a piede?
You can practice most of these words just by trying to name the businesses you see as you
walk, drive, or ride around town on a normal day. What do you see? A pharmacy. A cafe. A
hospital. A bank. Try asking how to find things! Say to yourself (or whoever is with you)
Excuse me, I need a hospital. Or ask, where is the nearest restaurant?

Numbers
Once you know numbers, you can haggle prices, find out conversion rates, get and give
phone numbers or addresses, and find out how far away things are.
The numbers from zero to nine are the most commonly used. They make up all the other
numbers. Youll need them when taking down a phone number or address, or when giving
out a credit card number or passport number.
Here the numbers zero through nine:

zero
zero

one
uno

two
due

three
tre

four
quattro

five
cinque

six
sei

seven
sette

eight
otto

nine
nove
After that, the next ten numbers start by defining ten and then adding it to the end (or
beginning) of those numbers 0-9 that you just learned. (Just as we do in English with the
ending -teen.)
Here are the numbers from ten to nineteen:

ten
dieci

eleven
undici

twelve
dodici

thirteen
tredici

fourteen
quattordici

fifteen
quindici

sixteen
sedici

seventeen
diciassette

eighteen
diciotto

nineteen
diciannove
Youll notice that dici was at the end up until sixteen, and then moved to the beginning for
the last three. If you can remember that, you can remember the numbers.
After the teens, everything before one-hundred works like those last three teens:
state the name of the tens digit and follow it with the name of the ones digit, like so:

twenty
venti

twenty-one
ventiuno

twenty-two
ventidue

thirty
trenta

thirty-five
trentacinque

simply

forty
quaranta

fifty
cinquanta

sixty
sessanta

seventy
settanta

eighty
ottanta

ninety
novanta
Youve probably noticed that there are no spaces or hyphens being used between digits in
these numbers. Each triplet of digits (hundreds, tens, and ones) is written as one word
(which can result in some really long words), and each triplet is then separated by a space.
So you can apply the same thing to the hundreds, thousands, millions, etc:

one-hundred
cento

two-hundred
duecento

three-hundred fifty
trecentocinquanta

one-thousand
mille

two-thousand
duemila

one million
un millione

two million
due millioni

five million four-hundred sixty-three thousand one hundred ninety four

cinque millione quattrocentosessantatremila centonovantaquattro

The Italian language also has a few interesting words of approximation, which dont have
direct equivalents in English. Here are a few of them:

about ten
decina

tens (similar to dozens)

decine

about a hundred
centinaio

hundreds
centinaia

about a thousand
migliaio

thousands
migliaia

There are also a few words that relate to numbers, which you should know:

each
ogni

all/everything
tutto

any
qualsiasi

nothing
nulla

none
niente

no one
nessuno

quarter
quarto

half
mezzo
And it helps to know a few units of measure as well:

liter
litro

milliliter
millilitro

gram
grammo

kilogram
chilogrammo

meter
metro

kilometer
chilometro

block
isolato

euro
euro

dollar
dollaro

pound sterling
sterlina
The text for this section may have seemed long, but its really not a lot of information. Take a
few days to make sure youve got it. Try reading numbers in Italian! Recite your address or
phone number. Read your credit card number, passport number, bank account number. Say
the numbers in Italian when you dial a phone, count change, or solve a sudoku!

Directions
Knowing the words for directions will not only help you if you are lost, but it also makes it
easier to figure out if an elevator is going up or down, if a door is an entrance or an exit, etc.
You can use direction words to point out an item you want to buy, or to follow along with a
tour guide.

north
nord

south
sud

east
est

west
oest

left
a sinistra

right
a destra

straight (ahead)
dritto

up to (ending at)
fino a

inside
dentro

outside
fuori

up
su

above
sopra

down
gi

below
sotto

in front of
davanti

behind
dietro

next to
accanto a

beside
di fianco

near
vicino

far
lontana

right here
qui

here
qua

there
l

this
questo

that
quello

before
prima

after
dopo

then
poi
Take a day or two to learn these words. Practice them. Use them. Try to describe where
things are. Describe what youre doing while you drive. Think about how to find the
bathroom, the kitchen, or the front door. How might you tell someone where one thing is in
relation to another?

Verbs
Looking back across this list so far, there is an incredible amount of things you can do in
Italian without ever learning about verbs. But with just the following handful of verbs you can
not only say a whole lot more, but you can also refine the things you were saying before.

to be
essere (irr.)

to drive
guidare

to fly
volare

to come
venire

to go
andare (irr.)

to bring
portare

to have to (do something)

dovere

to be able (to do something)

potere (irr.)

to have
avere (irr.)

to want
volere

to need
avere bisogno di

to know (a person, place, things)

conoscere

to know (a fact or a skill)

sapere (irr.)

to eat
mangiare

to drink
bere (irr.)

to sleep
dormire

to read
leggere

to watch
guardare

to see
vedere

to hear
sentire

to listen
ascoltare

to speak
parlare

to say
dire (irr.)

to tell
raccontare

to please
piacere
The verbs above are all listed in infinitive form. To use them, you need to conjugate the verb
to match the subject. Ill talk about conjugation when we get to the chapter on grammar. For
now, since were just talking about the basics that you need if you want to get by. You can
just use these simple endings to form the present tense.

-are
io

-ere

-ire

-o

-o

tu

-i

-i

-i

lui/lei

-a

-e

-e

noi

-iamo

-iamo

-iamo

voi

-ate

-ete

-ite

loro

-ano

-ono

-o

Just drop the -are, -ere, or -ire ending and replace it with the ending that matches the
subject pronoun for which you are conjugating. A few of the verbs listed above have irregular
conjugations, so while youre first getting started its a good idea to check the conjugation
by looking up the verb on WordReference.coms verb conjugator. They show irregular
conjugations in a different color so youll know when theres something irregular.
Well discuss verb conjugation in more detail just a few chapters ahead. Dont worry too
much about it right now. Just learn to form basic present tense conjugations and start
getting accustomed to using verbs in Italian. Once you can do this, you will be capable of
forming complete sentences! It took you years as a child to reach that point, but now youre
doing it after a matter of only a few days.

Nows the time to practice. Do it everywhere! Try to describe what you are seeing, or what
you are thinking, as you go through your day. See someone speaking? Say lui parla. See
people eating? Say loro mangiano. And if you learn the conjugations for essere, you can
use all of those descriptive words you learned recently to describe the people and things
around you.

Body parts
Knowledge of body parts is good for following instructions like keep your hands inside the
bus, but its absolutely essential knowledge if you should become sick or get injured while
youre in a foreign land. You need to be able to tell a doctor or pharmacist what hurts.

head
testa

eye
occhio

ear
orecchio

mouth
bocca

tooth
dente

neck
collo

chest
petto

heart
cuore

belly / stomach
pancia

back
schiena

arm
braccio

hand
mano

finger
dito

leg
gamba

foot
piede

toe
dito (del piede)

In addition learning body parts, its good to know how to describe a problem you might
have. If youre feeling sick or something is hurting, youll need to be able to explain that to
someone.

I have pain, or I have a ache

ho mal di

my hurts
mi fa male

I hurt my
ho ferito

Im sick
sto male
Once again, as youve already been doing with the rest of the vocabulary, take a day or two
to learn these words. Look in the mirror and describe your body parts. Change the order, so
youre not just memorizing a list. Hold up your hand and say this is my hand questo la
mia mano. Rest it on your your leg and say my hand is on my leg la mia mano sulla
gamba. Tell yourself about how your tooth hurts mi fa male la dente.
Dont worry about grammar. Youre just putting together thoughts based on the words
youve learned so far. In the coming chapters well talk about ways you can learn and
improve grammar. But start by just putting together the words you know and trying to make
complete thoughts. Let it be fun!

Vital information
Last, but definitely not least, you need to know how to tell a waiter that you are allergic to
nuts, or how to tell a doctor if you are diabetic or taking a heart medication.

I am a vegetarian.
Sono vegetariano.

I am allergic to
Sono allergico

to nuts.
alle noci.

to fish.
al pesce.

to shellfish.
agli frutti di mare.

to aspirin.
allaspirina.

to antibiotics.
agli antibiotici.

to penicillin.
alla penicillina.

I am pregnant.
Sono incita.

I am asthmatic.
Sono asmatico.

I am diabetic.
Sono diabetico.

I am epilleptic.
Sono epilettico.

Im taking medication for

Prendo la medicina per

He cant hear you. Hes deaf.

Non pu sentirsi. sordo.
No list of what you need to know to survive would be complete without spending a moment
on important emergency words. The odds are that most of these words arent important to
you. But if you or someone in your group is diabetic, or has an allergy, or is deaf, you should
take the time to learn that the necessary vocabulary, and practice saying it.

After youve reached this point, you will have enough knowledge of Italian to get through
basic tasks during a visit in Italy. You havent learned sentence structure or proper grammar,

but thats not important yet. Remember, were sipping from the hose. Theres a lot to learn,
and you cant learn it all at once.

Learning the language

Having made it this far, you should now know how to read Italian, and have learned several
important words and phrases. If you really have, in fact, learned the material from the last
chapter, you know enough to survive a visit to Italy on your own. You can have a simple
conversation, you can ask for directions, you can haggle prices at the market, and more.
But this book isnt just about learning the basics, its about becoming fluent. There is a lot
involved in fluency much more than I could write in any ebook, and certainly much more
than you would ever wish to read in one. If you want bite-sized lessons, there already
dozens of good courses you can buy, and I would be foolish to try to compete with them.
While there is no shortage of materials you can buy to get vocabulary, grammar, lessons,
etc., there is one thing thats missing from all of them: independence. All of the languagelearning systems on the market depend on you, the language learner, fitting yourself into
their mold. A system can only work when it is designed for the people using it, but these
corporations dont know who is using their products, so all they can do it design a system
and tell you how to use it.
Im going to do the opposite. I want to be perfectly clear about the fact that I dont know
who you are. I dont know what you do, and I dont know why you want to learn. The only
thing I know about you is that you want to learn Italian, and that you are serious enough
about doing so that you bought this ebook.

Rather than laying out a course of lessons and telling you how to change your life in order to
follow my system and learn a language, I want to show you how to learn without the need to
change your lifestyle. I want to show you how to learn every day, enough to become fluent in
one year, without committing to an additional hour of lessons and study every night, without
sitting in a corner repeating words from a CD, without spending every night sitting at a
computer program clicking on a picture of a man in a hat, while your friends are all out
having fun.

Learning as a lifestyle
A lot of people say they want to learn a language, but they never manage to actually do it.
Some never even bother to start. (The fact that youve read this far already means that
youre more committed than they are!) If they really wanted to learn, why havent they tried?
Yes, some people just say they want to learn, but theyre really not very serious about it. And
yes, there are some people who just lack initiative, or who lack commitment, or who get
overwhelmed. But I believe one of the biggest reasons why people never get started is
actually nothing more than a misconception: they dont think they have the time.
When I first started my blog about learning a new language every year, I received a lot of
comments from people who assumed I must have no time, or no job, or no girlfriend. I must
be independently wealthy, or a genius, or have no social life and no friends. But these
people are wrong. Their comments are based on a fundamental misconception about
learning.

The belief that you have to make time to study a language actually hurts your progress,
because when you are making time for the language, youre keeping it at a distance.
Youre treating it as a separate thing, which has to be done on its own, outside of everything
else. This limits your progress tremendously! When you learn this way, you can only learn as
much as you have time for, and you also find that once you exit this block of time youve set
aside, your skill with the language magically disappears!
Learning a language doesnt have to consume your time. If you make the language a
component of your lifestyle, you will learn every day in fact, you will learn a lot! without
having to sacrifice your time or change who you are or how you live. And by making it a part
of your life, it doesnt disappear once that block of time ends.
Lets not beat around the bush: there is a lot to learn. After you understand pronunciation
and you have a basic idea of grammar (which well look at in the next chapter), the greatest
amount of work in learning a language is vocabulary. A conversational speaker needs to
have a vocabulary of roughly 1,000 words, and a fluent speaker needs to know something
closer to 5,000 words. These are very rough estimates, but they give you a pretty clear idea
of how much there is to learn.
If you want to be fluent, you need to learn something close to 5,000 words. And if your goal
is to do that in a year, youre going to need to average something like 15 new words per day!
That may not sound like much, but learning a new word is more than just memorizing and
repeating. You need to know how to spell it, how to pronounce it, how to use it, how to
recognize it when others use it... thats not something you can do in four minutes with a
flashcard.

If you were doing 15 words a day with flashcards, spending 4 minutes on each card, you
would be committing an entire hour of every single day to boring, repetitive study. I
guarantee you would get bored of that within the first month or two, and youd eventually
give up, especially after youd done it for a while and started to realize that you werent
learning much anyway!
But if you like to read the news, you could simply switch to an Italian news source, and you
wouldnt be spending any additional time. You already have a certain amount of time
dedicated to reading the news, only you would now be doing it in Italian.
If you enjoy listening to music, you can just add some Italian musicians to your playlist. It
requires no extra time from you, and now youre hearing new words and new vocabulary
every day. You can download lyrics and follow along, and youll train your ears to hear better
in this new language.
If you enjoy watching movies, you can add Italian movies to your queue. Youll certainly find
(as I have) that Italian directors are often amazing storytellers, and the films will touch you in
ways that American movies generally do not. And along the way, even if youre reading from
subtitles, youll also be hearing and learning new words, as well as training your ears to hear
the words you know.
If you enjoy chatting with friends online, you can make some Italian friends (keep reading, Ill
tell you how later on), and then when you feel like chatting with someone about how your
day is going or how bored you are at work, you can do it in Italian and learn more.

If you enjoy going to Facebook or Twitter, if you check Google Reader every day, if you love
to take a moment to go check out MSN, or Yahoo, or read Craigslist, you can do all of those
things in Italian, and find ways to learn and use Italian to do all the things you do now.
Many ATM machines offer you a language choice. Next time you go to get cash, try doing it
in Italian. If you get scared, you can always press cancel and start over in English.
If you like to cook, find recipes in Italian. If you like to read, buy books in Italian. If you play
video games, see if there is a language settings for Italian. When you watch a DVD, look in
the menu and see if there is an Italian dub, or Italian subtitles. If you enjoy opera, you can
learn what the Barber of Seville is really saying. Change the interface on your computer, your
phone, your television to Italian.
Just look at all the things you already do, which could quickly and easily become ways to
learn Italian, all without requiring any additional time commitments from you. You dont have
to change anything about your lifestyle in order to start doing these things. And most of
them are also free!

Dont study Italian, consume it

Ive talked about how boring study is, and why that doesnt work. Ive talked about the
importance of connecting with a language, because long-term memory is irrational and

emotional. And Ive talked about the fact that you are what you do, and how you become
good at the things you do most often.
The best way to learn a language, then, it by consuming it constantly, and by using it
constantly. You will learn sentence structure by having been exposed to good sentence
structure. You will learn popular expressions by virtue of having been around people who
use those expressions. Youll learn punctuation, and vocabulary, and slang, all in the same
way: exposure.
Further into this book, Ill share several tricks for finding all that exposure, including those
that made the biggest difference in my own jump from basic speech into meaningful
conversation. But first I need to spend some time trying to make you feel guilty.
What follows for the rest of this chapter is information about materials for learning and
studying Italian, because in spite of the fact that Im telling you not to study it, I know youre
going to. Of course youre going to! Its human nature to trust the common wisdom and to
ignore the guy whos telling you to do things differently.
You probably think Im crazy for saying dont study, and you probably think Im lying when I
tell you that I dont study. Im sure thats what youre telling yourself, because even though
the things Im saying seem to make sense to you, you cant help the feeling that combining
my advice with what you already think you know will somehow be even better!
Youre probably going to say, if he can do this good without studying, imagine how much
better Ill do when I combine his advice with studying! And then, after youve ignored my
advice, and wasted several months trying all the things Im telling you not to do, youll come

back to this e-book and remember the things I said, and then youll be willing to give this
no studying thing a try.
But for now, since I know youre going ignore my advice, and run out to buy lessons, the
least I can do is try to steer you toward the good ones and away from the bad ones.

Learn for free

Sometimes it feels like there are a handful of people doing all the work in this world,
augmented by a huge ecosystem of service providers moving that work around and
reselling it. These middle men arent doing this because they love the subject matter or
because they want to help you to grow or succeed, theyre doing this because they want to
get rich, quickly and easily.
I believe in learning for free, as much as possible. I dont like the idea of making some lazy
middle-man rich while I learn, and even more than that I hate the idea of feeding fat
corporate tycoons. Often, the people who do the hard work of gathering the information, and
preparing those lessons and materials often are the ones who earn the least.
When people share information and help each other to learn, a whole society grows, and
everyone benefits. That is one of the reasons I started the Yearlyglot website. I want to share
information. And as Ive already said, there is certainly nothing youre reading in this ebook
right now which isnt already freely available on the internet.

Many people think its necessary to spend a lot of money to learn. They sign up for classes,
they hire tutors, they buy books and CDs and software and when its all done, they still
havent accomplished their goal. Spending money is not learning. If youre serious about
learning, you can actually do it while spending almost nothing!
Lets look at a few ways you can do that.

Google
The first thing you need to do on your journey toward learning Italian is to tell Google how it
can help you. When you go to Google.com, there is a little link at the top of the page that
says Search Settings. You can click that, or just click here and Ill help you get there.
You should see a list of languages with checkboxes next to them. Find the box for Italian
and make sure it is checked. This is going to tell Google that you want to receive search
results in Italian too, not just those in English.
Later, as your confidence in the language starts to grow a bit, you might want to come back
to this settings page again, and change your selection for Interface Language to Italian as
well. I dont recommend doing it in your first week, but after you understand the language a
bit and you get used to being able to find definitions for words you dont know, changing
your interface language is a good way to keep yourself immersed in Italian.

Once youve got your settings how you want them, start Googling everything! And do your
best to form your searches in Italian. Youll often be amazed at what you find. Searching for
news or current events is a great way to get accustomed to new vocabulary, because you
can read about an event that you already know about, and that will make it much easier to
figure out what the text is saying when you come to words you dont know.
When you dont know what a word means, try Googles image search! Instead of learning
the English words that correspond to Italian words, enter the Italian word into Google image
search and see what images show up. Often, that kind of visual translation will help the word
to stick in your mind much better.
There is no end to what else you can find on Google: Italian song lyrics, Italian poetry, Italian
recipes, Italian newspapers and magazines. Get curious and start looking. Google is
perhaps the best tool in the arsenal of a language learner, and its completely free!
For more about how you can use Google to learn a language, be sure to read the my ebook
Getting the Most Out of Google, available of my web site.

Google Translate
Speaking of Google, they have a tool youre probably going to use a lot: Google Translate.
Of all the online translators, theirs is the best.
When you use Google Translate, you can type a single word and get a list of possible
meanings, or you can type a phrase or a sentence, or even paste in several paragraphs, and

get a pretty good translation. No software translation can ever be expected to be perfect,
but their algorithms tend to work very well with colloquial expressions and turns of phrase.
There is also a computerized voice that can read you the text in Italian or English, and while
its not perfect or completely natural, its good enough to help you especially in the
beginning. As your knowledge of the language and your ability to read improves, youll start
to notice that the speaking feature is no longer helpful. But it can be handy when youre
getting started.

YouTube
I have already mentioned YouTube a few times now, and even included some links to videos.
I cant stress enough how useful YouTube is as a learning tool in a new language. The nature
of YouTube often makes it the perfect place to find the things you need when learning a
language.
Whether its learning the alphabet, finding help with pronunciation, or getting tips on
colloquial expressions, there is no shortage of people who have already made exactly what
youre looking for, and provided it to you free of charge on YouTube. All you have to do is
find it!
Here is a really good YouTube playlist to help you with learning Italian from scratch, starting
with the alphabet and working your way up through vocabulary and useful phrases: http://
bit.ly/eLR5nZ

But the usefulness of YouTube doesnt stop there. You can find music videos for Italian
songs, often even with the lyrics overlayed onto the video. You can find clips from news, or
sitcoms, or interviews from Italian television. You can find scenes from Italian movies. You
can find video-blogs from Italians just speaking to their camera. And one of my favorite
things to search for on YouTube videos of people performing Italian tongue twisters!
I cant stress the importance of using this resource enough. The more videos you find of
people speaking Italian on sources like YouTube, the more you will increase your exposure to
different accents, voices, and speaking styles. This is one of the best things you can do to
prepare yourself for the wide array of accents youre likely to experience in Italy.

WordReference
When youre learning a new language, one thing you cant live without is a really good
dictionary, and in my experience, there isnt one better than WordReference.com. This needs
to be a bookmark in every web browser you use. WordReference offers excellent, in-depth
translations and meanings, along with example uses and even colloquial expressions. And
they also have an excellent forum, where you can ask questions about anything you dont
know, or just browse the forums to see great examples of word usage, colloquial
expressions, translations, and more.

LiveMocha
LiveMocha is a social web site designed for language learning. Its easy to use and friendly,
and a good way to start learning basic vocabulary and get used to pronunciation. Each
lesson has an audio and a visual component, as well as a written and spoken component
which is corrected by a native speaker of the language you are learning!
I prefer to learn in more organic ways, by using the language rather than studying it, so I
dont adhere strictly to LiveMochas program, but it can be a useful way to get started. As I
said, its great for beginning to acquire vocabulary, for getting accustomed to pronunciation,
and learning some basic sentence structure. I generally do one lesson per night for about a
month, before I quit and move on to more first-hand ways of learning.

Busuu
Busuu is similar to LiveMocha. It is another social language learning site, offering beginners
level Italian. They have a few exercises that are a little bit different from LiveMocha, and
which some people perhaps even like a little bit better. Unfortunately, Busuu is set up in
such a way that after your free trial period expires, large amounts of content are stripped out
of the middle of your learning path, so it become frustrating and almost useless no doubt
to encourage you to pay. But since I dont like to pay, and because I hate the bait-andswitch style of motivation being used there, I dont use Busuu and I dont recommend it.

Lang-8
Lang-8 is something like a blog, where you can write anything you want, in any language
you like. But what makes it special is that native speakers of that language will then read
what you have written, correct your mistakes, and offer you suggestions of how to say
things better, or in more natural ways.
Of all the specifically language-oriented web sites I know, I think Lang-8 gets more traffic
from me than any other site. It is by far my favorite of all the language learning tools available
on the internet. Unlike LiveMocha and Busuu, where the social aspect is an ancillary benefit,
on Lang-8 it is the entire foundation of the site.
If you skip any other piece of advice I give you, don't skip this one: go sign up at Lang-8...
and use it! Every day, if you can. I will talk more about this excellent tool in a later chapter.

Books, courses, etc.

I began this section by stressing that I prefer to learn for free, and I encourage you to do that
as well. But in some cases, maybe youre not getting the answers you need, or maybe
youre not getting the practice you need, or maybe you just need a little bit more structure.

The bottom line is, no matter what I say about learning for free, there are some of you who
are going to spend money on commercial products. So Im going to take a moment to talk
about a few of the more well known products and my opinions of them.

Teach Yourself Italian

Ill begin by saying that I did not try the Teach Yourself: Italian book, so this opinion is going
to be a little bit based on speculation, but I have used several other books in the Teach
Yourself language series, and I think Ive got a pretty good understanding of their style and
what can be expected.
With that said, I dont like Teach Yourself, and I do not recommend using their books for
learning a language. In my experience, the material moves a bit too fast, is too vocabularybased (rather than dialog-based), and the accompanying audio is English-heavy (perhaps
65% English and usually 35% or less of the language being studied). Why pay for Italian
CDs just to hear English?

Teach Yourself Conversational Italian

Unlike their books, which I dislike, I find the Teach Yourself conversational audio products to
be somewhat helpful. When youre first getting started with the language, the audio lessons
in Teach Yourself Conversational Italian can be a nice confidence booster, and having audio
also helps greatly with pronunciation. The content is structured in the form of several
conversations that a person might have while visiting Italy.

You learn pronunciation, some basic grammar, and sentence structure. Sentences are
repeated at slow and fast pace, and conversations are given with spaces for you to play the
role of one side and then the other, to help you get accustomed to asking questions and
answering questions in Italian.
It's still a bit English-heavy, but you learn conversation from dialog, rather than from lists of
vocabulary. All-in-all, a decent product for beginners.

Colloquial Italian
I have been quite impressed with the Colloquial series of language learning books since the
first time I picked one up. In fairness, I have not used the first Colloquial Italian book, since I
prefer to learn the basics on my own and for free, as I have said several times throughout
this book.
However, after I had reached beyond a basic understanding of the Italian language and
needed more advanced information, I did get Colloquial Italian 2 for Kindle and the book has
been incredible. Sometimes it seems like the book knows exactly what my next question is
and answers it just when I need it to do so. If youre going to spend money on learning
materials, this book is money well-spent.

Living Language: Italian

I've used Living Language with Russian and German, and thought their product was
excellent, so when I began my year of Italian, I excitedly purchased the Living Language box
set for Italian and was horribly disappointed. The materials were awful, based mostly on
memorization of lists of words, and a complete waste of money. I hope theyll update it and
make it something that resembles the conversation-based product I liked so much with
Russian and German, but for now, based on my experience, I would adamantly recommend
avoiding Living Language for Italian. Besides, the Colloquial books cant be beaten.

Pimsleur
Pimsleur is an all-audio learning product, which is an immediate disadvantage in my opinion.
Learning to speak without learning to read and write makes you illiterate. And for a language
like Italian, with its rich literary history, illiterate isn't something I would want to be!
Furthermore, Pimsleur is another English-heavy product, which is an even bigger fault for a
product that is all audio. The only time Pimsleur is any good is for the absolute, complete
beginner, who knows absolutely nothing. If you match that description and want to burn a
few dollars, you can pick up some pronunciation while baby stepping into the language
(although I think Teach Yourself Conversational Italian would be a better choice). Otherwise, I
recommend you avoid this product as well.

Rosetta Stone
Without a doubt, Rosetta Stone is the most well-known name in language learning materials.
That is obviously a result of the fact that they spend so much money on marketing. And the
cost of all that marketing is reflected in the cost of their product.
Rosetta Stone products are, in my opinion, prohibitively expensive. There are three levels,
and even after completing Level 3, you will still not be fluent, so the idea of spending
upwards of $500 to purchase all three is something I simply can not recommend.
However, if you happen to be rich, and you dont mind throwing several hundred dollars
around or, if you are one of those people who doesnt mind an illegally obtained copy of
the software I can say that I have used Rosetta Stone products in the past, and their
formulaic repetition, while super-boring, can help you to remember vocabulary. Still, I think
you would do better to simply wire that $500 directly to me in exchange for personal
instruction over Skype. Or, better yet, use that sum to hire an Italian speaking partner
youll learn more in a week that way than you would in 4 months on Rosetta Stone.

Fluenz
If youre ready to spend money on expensive software solutions, I would consider Fluenz
rather than Rosetta Stone. The price is much less and rather than formulaic repetition,
Fluenz uses a more conversational style along with a series of games and exercises that are
far more interactive than the picture-clicking in Rosetta Stone.

I have not had an opportunity to try the full version of their product, but I did try the demo on
their web site when I began my year of Italian, and I was impressed with how wellconstructed it is. The virtual instructor can be a bit long-winded, but the lessons are more
relevant to real life situations, and the exercises are more fun and useful.

Classes
I think most people who have successfully learned to speak a language fluently will probably
tell you that they didnt learn much in a classroom. Most people I talk to agree that you can
learn much more, in a much shorter time, but learning on your own. Classrooms are often
just convenient scapegoats for your own lack of commitment to a task. When you fail to
meet your goal, you can say oh, the classes were too expensive, or complain that the
teacher wasnt very good, or didnt like you.
I often hear people complain that theyve been learning some language for a year and they
still dont know it. But it hasnt really been a year, has it? If youre attending one or two
classes per week, youve probably invested something between 30-60 hours in learning.
Thats not a year. Its not even a week!
Self-study is much less expensive one lesson book with accompanying audio can be
purchased for around $20, which is a lot less than the cost of a class. And you can spend a
much higher amount of time actually using it.

Tutor
Unlike the rest of this list, where its easy to form an opinion on the quality of learning youll
get, tutors can be both good and bad, and it really depends a lot on the type of person you
are, and on the tutor that you find.
Speaking for myself, I have found that I really dont learn much from the instructions others
give, so when dealing with someone in a tutor-like role, I find it much more useful to just get
into conversation as much as possible, and then have them help me when I struggle, and to
correct me when I make a mistake.
When working in this way, I have found tutors to be incredibly useful in my progress. But I
have to enforce this situation at every moment, because this person is still a tutor, and they
will keep resorting back to facts and writing down information if you allow it.
To get the best results from a tutor, one simple rule has worked really well for me: when
youre looking me in my eyes, Im learning. You cant look me in my eyes while you write. Or
read. If you remember that one rule, youll know when your tutor is starting to slip into habits
that dont help!

Understanding grammar
Of course, grammar is everyones favorite subject, so Im sure youre excited to have
reached this section!
This grammar section is not intended to be a big boring lesson. Its intended to be more of a
reference. But unlike a typical reference section, I did not put it at the end, and there are a
few good reasons for that. The first reason is that learning about grammar is the next step in
your learning. And the second is, if this section had been placed at the end, you would
probably never read it.
You dont need to memorize all of this stuff. It will always be here, and you can come back
as many times as you want or need. In fact, if youre using an e-reader I recommend you
add a bookmark here so you can get back easily.
As I said, your next step in learning Italian is to take a look at the grammar. My suggestion is
to read only one section per day. The idea is to get familiar with things you may not have
known, to get an idea of things you might encounter as you learn. Theres no way youre
going to learn it all at once, and it would be silly to try.
The moment youve finished reading this chapter, you will likely have already forgotten most
of what youve read. And thats okay! The important concepts will have sunk into your
subconscious, and later, as youre learning, youll encounter things and remember
something. Thats when you come back to your bookmark here and try to understand it
better.

So now, with the knowledge that you dont have to remember all of this in fact, you really
dont even have to understand all of it just yet now, hopefully, you can forget about any
negative feelings you have about the word grammar and just let your curiosity loose.
As you read the information about Italian grammar, dont worry about how easy or hard it will
be. Just let yourself be amazed at how interesting it is. Release your imagination and your
curiosity, and just marvel at how fascinating another language can be, how much additional
information can be conveyed by just changing a word ending. Think about how many
misunderstandings could be avoided by using gender on nouns.
Basically, get through this chapter with an open mind, and then dont worry about it any
more. Later, when you need to understand something specific, youll come back and it wont
seem so strange or difficult.

Nouns
There are a few things that make Italian nouns different from English nouns. The first of those
things is gender.

Noun gender
In English, all nouns are of the same neutral gender, but in Italian every noun has one of two
possible genders. These genders are called masculine and feminine, but dont be fooled
by those names. There is nothing that makes one noun more masculine or feminine than
another.
To put it into the simplest of terms, the gender of a noun merely describes its ending. Nouns
ending in -o are masculine, and those ending in -a are feminine. That is a simplification,
of course, and it isnt true 100% of the time, but its probably true close to 90% and thats
good enough for someone who is just learning about noun gender.
There are some irregular nouns, such as those borrowed from other languages, or those rare
cases where a noun ending in -o is feminine. These exceptions will have to be learned on a
case-by-case basis. But for the huge majority of nouns, the simplified rule works.

Plurals
As youve already learned, Italian words end in vowels. Instead of just adding an -s to the
end of a word to make it plural, as we do in English, Italian words change their ending. And
there are two plural endings: -i for masculine nouns and -e for feminine. So any noun that
normally ends in -o in the singular would end in -i in the plural, and any word normally
ending in -a in the singular would end in -e in the plural.

For example:
una macchina (a car) becomes due macchine (two cars).
un cavallo (a horse) becomes due cavalli (two horses).
As with everything, there are a handful of exceptions which you will encounter, but these
rules hold true more than 90% of the time.

Gender agreement
The reason its necessary to understand gender is because everything relating to nouns has
gender agreement. That means that nouns, adjectives, and even articles must use a
matching gender. If youre talking about a white car, its a una macchina bianca, but if its a
white dish, its un piatto bianco.
At first, the concept of gender agreement sounds overly complicated and unnecessary, but
when you get accustomed to it, you also discover that it has several advantages, one of
which is the fact that it helps to prevent ambiguity because you know which noun is being
modified by a particular adjective.

Articles
Like English, Italian uses definite and indefinite articles with nouns. But unlike English, each
Italian article has a gender and number, and they must agree with the noun to which they
refer.
The masculine singular definite article is il, unless the next word starts with a consonant
cluster, such as sp, st, or z, in which case you would use lo. (This is similar to the way things
work with a/an in English.) Eg: il fiore, il tavolo, lo specchio.
The feminine singular definite article is la, and does not change for consonant clusters. Eg: la
macchina, la finestra.
Both the masculine and feminine singular definite articles become l in front of a word that
begins with a vowel. Eg: lacqua, lorologio, laria, linizio.
The masculine plural definite article is i, unless the next word starts with a vowel, in which
case it becomes gli. Eg: i fiori, i libri, gli anni, gli uomini.
The feminine plural definite article is le, and does not change. Eg: le macchine, le montagne.
The masculine indefinite article is un, unless the next word starts with a consonant cluster
(sp, st, z), in which case it becomes uno. Eg: un tavolo, un amico, uno specchio.
The feminine plural definite article is una, but becomes un before a word beginning with a
vowel. Eg: una bottiglia, unamica.

I wrote that all out for the sake of being very clear, but its actually not so complicated. In
fact, its pretty straight-forward. The definite articles are il, la, i, and le, but il and la both
become l before a vowel, and i becomes gli before a vowel. The indefinite articles are un
and una, but una, becomes un before a vowel. And finally, il and un become lo and uno
before consonant clusters.
But rather than worry about where to put a particular article or how it should change, just
remember that all of these changes are simply ways of easing the job of your tongue and
making the words sound nicer, and clearer, as they come out. These features are necessary
to aid comprehension and prevent confusion.
Unlike English, which counts possessives (my, your, etc) as articles, Italian does not. So
when you talk about something that is yours, or mine, most of the time you will use both the
possessive and the article. Eg: Questa la mia macchina. Il mio bicchiere vuoto.

Subject pronouns
Similar to English, the Italian language recognizes six possible subjects for every verb: firstperson, second-person, and third-person, each in singular and plural form. The Italian
pronouns are:

1st person singular

Italian

English

io

Italian

English

2nd person singular

tu

you (familiar)

3rd person singular

lui
lei
Lei

him
she
you (formal)

1st person plural

noi

we

2nd person plural

voi

you all

3rd person plural

loro

they

Generally, subject pronouns are not used, since the conjugation of the verb makes it clear
who the subject is. They are only used when the sentence structure leaves the subject
unclear, or in cases where they are intentionally added for emphasis.

Direct object pronouns

When the object is already known, or implied, transitive verbs those that take a direct
object can use the following object pronouns, rather than explicitly specifying the object.
These pronouns replace the noun receiving the action.

Italian

English

1st person singular

mi

me

2nd person singular

ti

you (familiar)

3rd person singular

lo
la
La

him
her
you (formal)

1st person plural

ci

us

2nd person plural

vi

you all (familiar)

3rd person plural

li
le
Li
Le

they (m. or
mixed)
they (f.)
you (formal m.)
you (formal f.)

When a pronoun replaces the object, the pronoun must precede the verb in the sentence,
except in the case of the infinitive verb, where the pronoun can be attached to the end of the
verb.
Vedi ledificio? No, non lo vedo.
Me ne vado. Vi chiamer domani.

Indirect object pronouns

When the object is already known or implied, intransitive verbs those that do not take a
direct object use a different set of object pronouns. These pronouns replace not only the
noun receiving the action, but also the preposition used to indicate its relation.
Italian

English

1st person singular

mi

me

2nd person singular

ti

you (familiar)

3rd person singular

gli
le
Le

him
her
you (formal)

1st person plural

ci

us

2nd person plural

vi

you all (familiar)

3rd person plural

loro / gli

they

Similar to the direct object pronouns, these indirect pronouns must precede the verb in the
sentence, except with the infinitive, in which case the pronoun can be attached to the end of
the verb.

 Cosa hai dato a Enrico? Gli ho dato un regalo.

Cosa ti hai regalato Enrico? Mi ha regalato un libro.
Remember, the key difference between these indirect object pronouns and the direct object
pronouns from the previous section is that these also imply a preposition.

Reflexive pronouns
A reflexive pronoun is used to indicate that the object of an action is also the subject of that
action. Here are the reflexive pronouns.
Italian
1st person singular

mi

2nd person singular

ti

3rd person singular

si

1st person plural

ci

2nd person plural

vi

3rd person plural

si

Reflexive pronouns are really only used with reflexive verbs, which I will discuss further down
in the section on verbs.

The partitive
Italian also uses a partitive pronoun ne. The partitive is a special kind of pronoun which not
only refers to a noun, but also implies the preposition of, or from. When you see the word
ne, you can imagine the words of it or from this as filling its place.
You can see it in the following example:
Vorrebbe del caf?
Grazie, no. Non ne bevo.
Its also important to note that the partitive pronoun is compulsory in situations where a
partitive phrase exists. For example, in the question Cosa ne pensi di questo libro? you
must use the partitive even though you have specified questo libro, because the preposition
di could have various meanings in this sentence. The partitive makes it clear what youre
asking.

Combining pronouns
There are several circumstances under which pronouns can be combined. In fact, this is
quite common in Italian. Whenever pronouns are combined, mi, ti, ci, vi, and si become me,
te, ce, ve, and se.
With transitive verbs, it is possible to have both a direct object and an indirect object,
allowing for the use of both types of pronoun.
A chi ha regalato Enrico il libro? Me lo ha regalato.
Che devo fare con questa camicia? Puoi darmela.
Similarly, it is possible to combine direct or indirect objects (or both!) with reflexive pronouns.
Cosa ti hai comprato al negozio?
Ti hai lavato le mani? S, me le ho lavate.
And this also works with the partitive.
Basta. Andatevene!
Hai comprato delle cioccolatini al negozio? Certo! Me ne comprate molte!

Verbs
Perhaps the thing that is the hardest to get used to when learning Italian is verb conjugation.
Unlike English, which for the most part has only one verb form shared by all subjects (adding
an s for the third-person singular form), Italian like most Indo-European languages uses a
different verb form for each of the six subjects.
Italian verbs are divided in three types, based on their endings: -are, -ere, and -ire, and they
each behave slightly differently. All Italian verbs have one of these three endings. The ending
will help you figure out how to conjugate the verb, how to form its participle, and more.

Present
The most common verb tense is, of course the present tense, and its certainly quite
common in Italian. While there is some room for added subtlety, there is really only one
present tense in Italian, and understanding it sets the stage for understanding all other Italian
verb tenses.

Present indicative
I briefly described this in the chapter on The Basics, but well talk about it more here.

In order to conjugate a verb, you select the ending that corresponds to the subject, and add
that ending to the verbs stem, based on the its ending. In most cases (with the exception of
irregular verbs), the verb stem is found by simply removing the ending (-are, -ere, -ire) from
the verb in its infinitive form.
-are

-ere

-ire

io

-o

-o

-o

tu

-i

-i

-i

lui/lei

-a

-e

-e

noi

-iamo

-iamo

-iamo

voi

-ate

-ete

-ite

loro

-ano

-ono

-ono

For example, to conjugate the verb vedere (to see) in the second-person singular (you) form,
you would drop the -ere ending to find the verbs stem ved-, and then add the -i ending,
which corresponds to the tu (you) form of the verb. Thus, you have (tu) vedi, meaning you
see.

Use of the gerund

To highlight a current, ongoing action, you can also use a construct similar to the English
present continuous tense, by conjugating the verb stare and then adding the gerund form of
the verb for the action being described.
We conjugate stare as outlined above for an -are verb:
stare
io

sto

tu

stai

lui/lei

sta

noi

stiamo

voi

state

loro

stanno

Then, we add the gerund, which is formed by adding -ando to the root of -are verbs, or endo to the root of -ere and -ire verbs. For example, camminare becomes camminando,
vedere becomes vedendo, and capire becomes capendo.

In English, the present tense and the present continuous tense have different uses. To say I
read a book is not the same as saying I am reading a book, the former being more general
and the latter specifying the current act.
The same is not true in Italian. The phrases leggo un libro and sto leggendo un libro
mean the same thing. Thus, you will find this construction using the gerund is used much
less commonly in Italian. Mostly, the stare + gerund construction is used when it is
important to highlight the current, active nature of the action.
When in doubt, as a rule of thumb, just go with the indicative. If you frequently form your
sentences with the gerund, borrowing from the familiar English construct, your speech will
likely sound strange and unnatural to an Italian.

Past
There are a few ways to form the past tense in Italian, but the good news is that its far less
confusing than in English. In fact, youll find that most of the time, Italians use a past form
that is very similar to the past-perfect tense in English (I go - I have gone).

The past participle

The past participle is used a lot in Italian. Youll see it in the next section about the simple
past, as well as in a few forms of the subjunctive. Forming the past participle is pretty easy.
In most cases, the verb is modified according to its ending, as follows:
-are

-ere

-ire

-ato

-uto

-ito

There are, however, several verbs with irregular participles, such as vedere (visto), and dire
(detto). If you spend enough time consuming the language through reading, listening to
music, etc, youll naturally pick up most of the irregularities. But when you are in doubt, go
to WordReferences verb conjugator and make sure youve got it right.
Here are a few examples:
Ho cambiato case la settimana scorsa.
Abbiamo perso i nostri documenti.
Sono partito per Roma.
Got it? Good, because youre going to use it a lot once you learn...

Il passato prossimo - the recent past

While its name means the recent past, this verb tense is most often referred to as the
simple past, no doubt due to how easy it is to form. You simply conjugate the present
indicative form of the auxiliary verb avere or essere, and then add on the past participle of
the verb, similar to the past perfect tense in English.
So how do you know whether to use avere or essere as your auxiliary verb? In linguistic
terms, this depends on whether the verb is transitive or intransitive. Basically, a transitive
verb is a verb which takes a direct object (eg: eat [something], watch [something], call
[someone], etc), whereas an intransitive verb is a verb which requires a preposition to explain
its action (eg: talk to [someone], walk to [somewhere], etc).
When a verb is transitive, you form the simple past by conjugating the auxiliary verb avere
and adding the past participle of the verb. When a verb is intransitive, you conjugate the
auxiliary verb essere and then add the past participle.
So, to form the simple past, you first conjugate the auxiliary verb:
avere (trans.)

essere (intrans.)

io

ho

sono

tu

hai

sei

lui/lei

ha

noi

abbiamo

siamo

avere (trans.)

essere (intrans.)

voi

avete

siate

loro

hanno

sono

Then, you just add the past participle.

Ho prenotato una camera nel albergo a Milano.
Questo libro mi piaciuto.
Avete sentito le notizie?
Finally, a note about endings. When the auxiliary verb essere is used, the ending of the
participle is always changed to agree with the subject in gender and number. Eg: Sono
arrivati nostri ospiti, ma mia mama non ancorra arrivata.
When the auxiliary verb avere is used, the ending remains unchanged, except when the
subject is specified before the verb using a pronoun. Eg: Hai comprato la macchina? S, lho
comprata.

Il passato remoto - the distant past

An interesting feature of Italian is the way that the perfective (usually the most common form
of past tense in a language) has fallen out of favor. The simple past (described above) is

now the most used past tense in Italian. However the perfective form is still retained to
describe events in the distant past.
Il passato remoto is a little more complicated to form than il passato prossimo. As you can
see here, it has new verb endings that are applied to each of the three types of verbs:
-are

-ere

-ire

io

-ai

-ei

-ii

tu

-asti

-esti

-isti

lui/lei

noi

-ammo

-emmo

-immo

voi

-aste

-este

-iste

loro

-arono

-erono

-irono

These endings will serve you well as a guideline when forming il passato remoto, however
there are also several exceptions to these rules. The exceptions are often quite
unpredictable and hard to remember. Surely this goes a long way toward explaining why the
simple past has become so popular. When working with il passato remoto, take the time to
look at WordReferences verb conjugator and make sure that you understand and use the
correct past tense.

The distant past is used in literature, and its still commonly used in speech in southern Italy.
But its not necessary to master this verb tense on your way to fluency. When in doubt, you
can use the simple past and you will be understood.

Limperfetto - the imperfective

The imperfective describes past events that were ongoing in the time being discussed. For
example, if you say we went to the beach, that action is completed. But if you say we
went to the beach every Thursday, that action is now ongoing and should be described
using the imperfective. You would also use the imperfective when you are describing the
action while it happens, such as we were going to the beach when we saw something
strange.
The imperfective is not difficult to form. Essentially, it is the same as the present indicative,
but with an extra v syllable at the front of the ending. Observe:
-are

-ere

-ire

io

-avo

-evo

-ivo

tu

-avi

-evi

-ivi

lui/lei

-ava

-eva

-iva

noi

-avamo

-evamo

-ivamo

voi

-avete

-evete

-ivete

loro

-are

-ere

-ire

-avano

-evano

-ivano

In most cases, its pretty easy to figure out when you need to use the imperfective tense, but
one case that often isnt obvious to people is when you would say I knew [something]. Its
actually English which uses this incorrectly, as the act of knowing is an ongoing action. Thus,
in Italian, the phrase I didnt know his name would be properly expressed as non sapevo il
suo nome. If you had used the perfective or the simple past in this situation, it would imply
that you have since forgotten.

Future
The future can be somewhat quirky in Italian. There is a future tense il futuro semplice
but it carries a few additional implications which I will describe momentarily. First, I want to
tell you that in most cases, describing the future is surprisingly easy in Italian, because most
of the time youll just use the present indicative.
Vado al cinema stasera.
Ceniamo alle otto.
Arrivo a Roma la settimana prossima.

The important thing to note is that in all of these examples, the action in the future is
determined, expected, decided. When a future action is unclear or undecided, we use...

Il futuro semplice
As the name suggests, forming the future tense in Italian is simple. Once again were using
basically the same endings that we learned with the present indicative. The key differences
here are that we insert an r syllable before the ending, and that we shift the stress one
syllable to the right of where it was in the present tense.
-are

-ere

-ire

io

-(e)r

-(e)r

-ir

tu

-(e)rai

-(e)rai

-irai

lui/lei

-(e)r

-(e)r

-ir

noi

-(e)remo

-(e)remo

-iremo

voi

-(e)rete

-(e)rete

-irete

loro

-(e)ranno

-(e)ranno

-iranno

For -are and -ere verbs, the extra syllable gets an -er-, but depending on the preceding
letters and the stress pattern of the verb stem, sometimes that e is omitted. For example,
andare-andr, vedere-vedr.
For -ire verbs, nothing is dropped. Eg: finire-finiremo, capire-capirai.
Il futuro semplice is used to describe future events that are uncertain, unknown, in doubt, or
subject to change.
Andremo alla spiaggia domani.
Ma chi sar alla porta?
Forse troverai l'amore in Italia!

Subjunctive
The subjunctive is a grammatical feature that has mostly disappeared from English, but it
still comes up in Italian. It expresses doubt, uncertainty, hope, fear, possibility, opinions, etc.
Similar to il futuro semplice, it describes a verb whose action is not certain.
In the English sentence, I hope that we will win, the clause we will win is not certain. This
would be the subjunctive mood. We dont alter the words to suggest this uncertainty, but it is
known because any object of the verb to hope [that] is uncertain. In Italian, however, this
uncertainty must be reflected in the conjugation of the verb.

While there are other situations where it will be required, we can generally expect the
subjunctive to follow any time we would use the word that in English. In Italian, this means
that the subjunctive mood will typically be applied to any clause introduced by the word che.
The following are some examples of sentences that use the subjunctive mood. The
subjunctive verb is bold, and the word that causes it to be subjunctive is italic.
I wish it were warmer.
It is imperative that he be here on time.
If it werent for him I wouldnt be here.
We do not demand that you use this product, but we would recommend it.
The governor kindly requests that you attend his conference.
Again, we really dont change the verb to reflect the subjunctive mood in English, so in most
of those examples they dont read as anything unusual. However phrases like that he be in
the second example reflect the fact that the subjunctive does still exist.
Now lets look at how the subjunctive is formed in Italian. There are four forms of the Italian
subjunctive, but once you understand the first two, the last two are pretty simple.

Il congiuntivo presente - the present subjunctive

This is the most commonly used form of the subjunctive. It is used to describe actions in the
present that are uncertain or unreal.

Conjugation is best imagined as a reversal of endings. The -are verbs are made to look like ire, and the -ere and -ire verbs are made to look like -are. Once you develop a natural sense
for proper conjugations, the congiuntivo presente will naturally feel backward, which serves
as an easy indication of its sense of uncertainty.
All three of the singular verb forms use the same ending, which is a reversal of the
conjugation for the first-person singular. When the first-person of andare is vado, the
subjunctive in all singular forms is vada. When the first-person of chiamare is chiamo, the
subjunctive in all singular forms is chiami.
In most cases, the ending for the third-person plural is simply the singular subjunctive,
pluralized by adding -no to the end.
The ending for the first-person plural does not change from the present indicative, and the
ending for the second-person plural simply inserts an i in the ending from the present
indicative.
-are

-ere

-ire

-ire (2)

io

-i

-a

-a

-isca

tu

-i

-a

-a

-isca

lui/lei

-i

-a

-a

-isca

noi

-iamo

-iamo

-iamo

-iamo

voi

-iate

-iate

-iate

-iate

loro

-ino

-ano

-ano

-iscano

Any time youre talking about an uncertain event in the present tense, you must use il
congiuntivo presente. A clue that the subjunctive is needed is any time a sentence begins
with one of the following phrases: Credo che..., Immagino che..., necessario che..., Penso
che..., Spero che...
Here are some examples of the subjunctive. Subjunctives are bold, and the phrases that
require the subjunctive are italic.
Credo che tu sia la ragazza pi bella del mondo!
Spero che la nostra squadra vinca!
Non penso che questo sia unidea bellissima.

Il congiuntivo imperfetto - the imperfective subjunctive

After the congiuntivo presente, this is the next most used form of the subjunctive. It is used
to describe unclear, uncertain, or unreal actions in the present which are ongoing. This is just
like the imperfective we talked about before, with the past tense, only in this case were
talking about the present tense and we have the subjunctive mood.
Once again, the endings are easy. The obvious theme here is the addition of a double-s
syllable. Note that unlike the congiuntive presente, in this case, the third-person singular is
slightly different from the first- and second-person. Also note the -ero ending that appears in
the third-person plural. Well see that again.

-are

-ere

-ire

io

-assi

-essi

-issi

tu

-assi

-essi

-issi

lui/lei

-asse

-esse

-isse

noi

-assimo

-essimo

-issimo

voi

-aste

-este

-iste

loro

-assero

-essero

-issero

Whenever you talk about something ongoing in the present tense which is uncertain or in
doubt, you will use il congiuntivo imperfetto. These will generally be things you wish you
were doing, things you think are happening, or things you doubt.
Credevo che il film cominciasse alle 8:00.
Speravamo che tu lavorassi gi sul progetto.

Il congiuntivo passato - the past subjunctive

This is essentially il passato prossimo, or the simple past, but with the congiuntivo presente
applied to the auxiliary verb. It describes uncertain actions in the past.

avere

essere

io

abbia

sia

tu

abbia

sia

lui/lei

abbia

sia

noi

abbiamo

siamo

voi

abbiate

siate

loro

abbiano

siano

Even a fluent speaker of Italian probably isnt going to use this very often. Its probably not
necessary to worry too much about remembering it. But its good to be able to recognize it.

Congiuntivo trapassato - the pluperfect

And similar to the previous example, this is essentially il passato prossimo, or the simple
past, but with the congiuntivo imperfetto applied to the auxiliary verb. It describes uncertain
action in the past that were, or more accurately, might have been ongoing.

io

-are

-ere

avessi

fossi

-are

-ere

tu

avessi

fossi

lui/lei

avesse

fosse

noi

avessimo

fossimo

voi

aveste

foste

loro

avessero

fossero

As with il congiuntivo passato, even a fluent speaker of Italian probably isnt going to use this
very often. Its probably not necessary to worry too much about remembering it. But its
good to be able to recognize it.

Il condizionale
The conditional tense is similar to the subjunctive, in that it describes something that is not a
fact. But the difference is that rather than being unknown or uncertain, the meaning is
conditional. That is, it has two possible states, both of which could possibly be true.
The best way to think of the conditional is by pairing the word would with the verb. If the
verb is go, the conditional is would go. If the verb is eat, the conditional is would eat.

-are

-ere

-ire

io

-(e)rei

-(e)rei

-irei

tu

-(e)resti

-(e)resti

-iresti

lui/lei

-(e)rebbe

-(e)rebbe

-irebbe

noi

-(e)remmo

-(e)remmo

-iremmo

voi

-(e)reste

-(e)reste

-ireste

loro

-(e)rebbero

-(e)rebbero

-irebbero

I like to think of this as the past of the future, because the endings are similar to what you
might get if you added the imperfective to the simple future. And in my mind, thats what the
conditional is... its the future, spoken of as if it were in the past. If this description confuses
you, ignore it. It helps me, so Ive included it for you.
Here are some examples of the conditional tense.
Se faceva caldo andremmo al parco.
Mi piacerebbe leggere questo libro.
Vorrei un caf.
The conditional is also necessary for expressing the idea of could and should.

 Ecco quelli che dovresti conoscere.

Potrei ballare tutta sera.

I verbi reflessi
A reflexive verb is a verb whose action is carried out on the same subject that is performing
the action. That is, the person performing the action is also the recipient of the action.
Reflexive verbs always end in -si in the infinitive form. Instead of -are, -ere, and -ire, they are
-arsi, -ersi, and -irsi. But when conjugated, that -si ending comes off of the end, and is
moved to the front of the verb in the form of a reflexive pronoun, which was discussed
previously in the section on pronouns.
Reflexive verbs are conjugated in the same way as regular verbs, but with the addition of a
reflexive pronoun. In many cases a regular verb and its reflexive counterpart will have the
meaning, but with a reflexive object. However, there are also many cases where the reflexive
version of a verb has a different meaning, so its important to look them up to make sure
youre not confused.
Here are a few examples of reflexive verbs.
A che ora ti svegli?
Mi dispiace. Non arrabbiarsi.

Now, put it out of your mind

Thats all you really need to know about grammar. Dont waste your time studying that stuff,
it will all make sense to you over time, as you are exposed to the language.
As I said at the onset of this chapter, the point is simply to quickly familiarize yourself with
the features that exist. This will make them stand out to you when you see them happening,
and youll learn them quickly and naturally, without studying.
Your goal now must be to get tons and tons of exposure to the language, both consuming
Italian and also using it yourself, so thats the next thing Ill talk about!

Getting exposure to Italian

Once you understand grammar, your work is cut out for you. As I said earlier, after you
understand pronunciation and basic grammar, the biggest challenge in learning a language
is growing your vocabulary. You need to learn words, phrases, idioms, colloquial
expressions, etc.
When I talked about learning as a lifestyle, I said that the best way to learn a language is by
using it, rather than by studying. I suggested learning by reading, listening to music,
watching movies, chatting, and basically carrying out your life in a second language.
Remember not to be impatient. As I said back at the beginning, sip from the language hose.
Theres a lot to learn and a lot to know. It isnt going to happen all at once. But if youre
steady and patient, youll find yourself understanding, speaking, and even thinking fluently in
Italian by the time your year is over.
There are many different accents in Italy, and many different types of slang. When learning
Italian, its important to get as much exposure as possible to different types of speech from
various speakers. Get that exposure while youre learning, so you dont end up in Florence
wondering why you cant understand anyone after you had no problem understanding
people in Milan!

Read everything you can find!

Really! One of the best ways to learn a language is by reading. Normal conversations
typically involve a small vocabulary, whereas authors have a tendency to give more detail
and use more words. Naturally, you dont need to know every word, but the advantage to
seeing more words is that you then see which ones come up repeatedly, and then you know
what you need to learn.
Reading has the built-in advantage of working at whatever pace youre comfortable. If youre
a beginner and you tend to read slowly, the words wont get ahead of you. Printed words
dont have a particular accent or a gravelly voice. If you forget a word, you can go back to
where you read it and see it again. These things are much more difficult in relation to spoken
language, conversations, etc.
So the key to building your vocabulary is to read everything you can get your hands on. If
you like to read the news, find an Italian news site and read the news in Italian! I have found
Corriere della sera, la Repubblica, and Libero to be good places for reading news in Italian.
Add them to Google Reader. Like them on Facebook. Get this content appearing in front of
you without the need to go out looking for it every day.
I mentioned a number of Italian musician above. Youre sure to find several that you like.
Find the lyrics on Google and read them! Every time that you find yourself liking a song,
thats an opportunity not only to learn by listening, its also an opportunity to learn by
reading! The only thing you need to know, in order to find Italian song lyrics is the word
testo, which is the Italian word for lyrics. Just type that and the name of the song into
Google.

You can keep up with your hobbies and interests in Italian, too. If you like travel blogs, as I
do, you can find travel blogs written in Italian. If you like photography, find photography sites
in Italian. If youre into electronics and gadgets, find an Italian technology site. The point is
not to add work and tedium to your day, the point is to do all the things you do now, but do
them in Italian. When youre following your interests, you wont experience the tedium that
leads to giving up.
All of these things are small, bite-sized materials to read. A news article, song lyrics, a travel
blog, a gadget report... none of this requires much time out of your day. And its small
enough that youre restricting the number of unknown words youll have to look up.
Eventually over time, your skill in the language will grow and improve. When it does, you
should consider reading a book. There are several easy-to-find options available on Amazon
for side-by-side readers books printed in both Italian and English that make it easy to
practice reading more text while still getting easy access to the words you dont know.

Google Reader
When I first start learning a new language, I find literally dozens of useful web sites:
vocabulary sites, dictionaries, videos, and much more. But in truth, I only visit a handful of
sites regularly. In place of the rest, there is one web site that gets daily traffic from me:
Google Reader.

Google Reader is an RSS aggregator. It does all the work of finding new updates on all of
your favorite web sites, groups them together in an easy-to-read format, and presents them
to you for you to read at your leisure. This saves you all the works of hunting around the web
every day and trying to keep up with dozens of web sites that may or may not have any
updates.

Libero
The first time I received an email from an Italian, it came to me from an @libero.it email
address, so I immediately went to see what this site was about. It turns out, Libero is a lot
like an Italian equivalent to Yahoo or MSN. They have news, sports, horoscopes, social
networking, dating, and other popular features.
If youre already a GMail addict, youre probably not going to want to switch to Libero, but
its still worth signing up. Even if you only use the email address occasionally, or rarely, or
even not at all, you can still get a lot of value out of creating a membership and using the
site. You can share photos, make new friends, and play games, and there are also chat
rooms there where you can go practice your Italian with other people in real time.
Other Italian portal sites that might be of interest are www.liquida.it, www.cityrumors.it, or
www.virgilio.it.

Meemi
It only took me one visit to Meemi to love this quirky little Italian social network. Its part
Twitter, part Facebook, part Tumblr, but thats not really what makes it cool. The moment you
join, you are welcomed by the members there. The sites creator is also one of its most
active users, and truly one of the nicest internet users you could want to meet.
One particularly convenient detail about Meemi that makes it great for someone learning
Italian is that the updates are generally short bits of text usually just one or two sentences
written in real, colloquial Italian. Youre getting the language as people actually speak it,
not the stiff, academic style of language you might learn from a book.
Youll see abbreviations, intentional misspellings, puns, jokes, teasing. You will at times be
frustrated by the words you dont understand. Other times, you will laugh out loud at the
things you did understand. And youll get a kick out of the internet memes that find their way
into another language, faster than the speed of light.
When you join Meemi, look for yearlyglot and add me as a friend!

Facebook
Yes, Facebook! If youre using the internet at all, youre probably using Facebook. Whenever
you Like a web page on Facebook, updates from that page will start appearing in the feed
on your wall. This is a great way to learn a language!

Find things you like in the Italian language and like them on Facebook. Soon enough, youll
notice interesting content appearing on your wall, and your natural desire to read that
content will have you practicing your Italian, without stepping outside of your normal routine
at all.
Also, as your Italian improves, and your confidence builds, there is one more way you can
use Facebook to learn. Just as I suggested above with Google, Facebook also allows
provides a way to change your interface language.

Watch movies and television

Most of us have our favorite movies those ones we could watch over and over and never
get tired of it. Find them and watch them in Italian! Whether its Gladiator or National
Lampoons Christmas Vacation, if its a movie you know and love, youll be able to connect
what you know is being said to the words youre hearing in Italian. That helps you to fill in
blanks for what you dont know, and it also helps you to figure out the words you know but
didnt understand when you heard them.
Then, there are the movies youve never seen before those you would rent or buy. Its
usually good to try to get these with subtitles, because you probably dont want to lose track
of whats happening in the film if your comprehension fails you occasionally. And if its an
English film dubbed into Italian, the chances are strong that youll have some problems with

comprehension, because the Italian dub will be crammed into the space left by the English
dialog.
A better choice is actual Italian movies, with English subtitles. The reason these are better is
because they were written in Italian, by Italians, so the language will be more natural, unlike
dubbed films, which were originally written in English. Not to mention that Italian cinema is
often a truly impressive experience, filled with much more symbolism, emotion, and tension.
And finally, in addition to movies, plenty of us have our favorite television shows that we love
to watch. If youre into CSI, or Lost, or House, you will already know the personalities of the
characters on screen, and youll have some ability to understand what youre seeing even
when the dialog isnt always clearly understood.

Learn from music

Music is an excellent way to learn a language. I cant stress this fact enough! Everything that
you need to do to learn language is already happening for you in music. Music involves
repetition. It involves listening and comprehension. It encourages participation and singing
along. And of course, music stirs the emotions which youll remember is the key to longterm memory.
A friend once told me a story about her frustrations when she received an assignment to
memorize a poem in English and then recite it to her English class. She could read the poem

over and over, and still never manage to remember it, yet ironically, while driving home from
her class, a song she enjoyed came on the radio and she realized that she knows almost
every word. Why is a poem so hard to remember and a song so easy?
Music adds emotion. It attaches energy to the words being sung, creating that emotional
component that is necessary for long-term memory. Songs also use repetition, another
important component of learning. And most of all... songs are fun! Would you rather have
your nose buried in a book?
Here are a few Italian musicians that were helpful for me in reaching my goal of fluency in
one year. I filled my iPod with everything I could find from these and other artists. They may
not all be to your liking, but I recommend giving each one a chance and finding out which
ones you like the most.

Andrea Bocelli
Andrea Bocelli is a tenor and a classical crossover artist, at times singing in a manner like
opera and at other times like a pop artist. The music is powerful and dramatic, and his
singing is always strong and clear. Definitely a great choice of music for someone just
getting started with Italian.

Max Pezzalli / 883

Max Pezzalli, formerly the singer from the group 883, sings fun pop songs in a clear, easyto-understand voice. Unlike Bocelli, there isnt the hint of classical stylings here. Though
perhaps a bit out of date and no longer modern, Pezzallis songs are nevertheless fun to
listen to. The style might remind you of an Italian version of Huey Lewis or Billy Joel.

Nek
When I listen to Nek, the vocals often remind me of Sting. Nek has a more modern pop
sound than Max Pezzalli, but still sings in a clear voice. His songs are well-produced and
catchy and feature the vocals much more than the music.

Domenico Modugno
Definitely a nostalgic sound. Domenico Modugno is perhaps something of an Italian
equivalent to our Frank Sinatra. Any time you mention Modugno to an Italian, the description
you get in response is that hes a very important Italian singer. Theres a much more
genuine ethnic Italian feel to his songs theyre definitely not pop. He occasionally uses
some dialect in his songs, which can make them hard to understand at times.

Francesco Di Gregori
A very popular Italian artist, Francesco Di Gregori is singer in the tradition of the Italian
cantautore - the singer/songwriter. If you want to connect with current Italian culture, this is
the type of music to listen to. And Di Gregori is definitely among the top performers in this
genre. His rough voice and gritty recording style make comprehension a bit difficult at times,
and is lyrics sometimes use a more sophisticated vocabulary. Thats all part of getting better
at the language, right?

Caparezza
If you took Eminem, Insane Clown Posse, and Bloodhound Gang, rolled them all up into
one, and then made them sing in Italian, the result would be Caparezza. With powerful lyrics
and clever music, Caparezza has quickly become one of my favorite groups in any language!
Most of the songs are high-speed rap that even some native Italians have a hard time
understanding, but what better way to train your ears than listening to something like that?

Laura Pausini
Laura Pausini is a very well-known pop singer both in Italian and in Spanish, and she
occasionally sings in French, too. You might think of her as a European equivalent of Sarah
MacLaughlin or Cheryl Crow, but with a much larger body of work, and (in my opinion) much
more talent.

Jovanotti
A singer-songwriter whose song styles span from pop, to folk, to rap, to ska. Its impossible
to fit Jovanotti into one box, but its not hard to agree that his music is well-written and wellproduced, and youre certain to find something in his works that suits you.

Many more
This is just a sampling of the artists whose music I found helpful over the course of the year
as I learned Italian. There are many more excellent artists to look for, including Zucchero,
Subsonica, Carmen Consoli, Negrita, Alexia, Raf, Gianna Nannini, Vasco Rossi, and more.

Using the language

The best way to learn is by using the language. You need to create create thoughts,
create sentences, create content. Listening and consuming a language is valuable and
important, but its still mostly passive. Understanding everything you hear is not fluency.
Being fluent means being able to produce flowing thoughts. It means creating. Unlike
consuming, creating in a language is not passive. It requires understanding and recall. And
just as with any other skill, the only way to improve is by doing it.
Remember, you are what you do. In order to be fluent, you must first be not fluent. You have
to do the work, and the repetition, and burn those pathways into your brain in order to make
it function at the speed of fluency, and become a fluent speaker.

Write every day.

One of the best things you can do on your path to fluency is simply to write. Do it every day.
Make sure to write something in Italian every single day, and make sure that its not the same
thing youve already written.

Writing is a great exercise, because it forces recall, but it gives you the comfort of time.
When you dont know a word, you can look it up. When youre not sure about a conjugation,
you can go review it. The pressure of time is removed when you write.

Meemi
I mentioned the web site Meemi earlier. I visit Meemi literally every day, and in doing so I get
endless exposure to expected sentence structure, proper and improper grammar,
colloquialisms, expressions, slang, jokes, songs, videos, and funny pictures. Thanks to
Meemi, I havent just learned a lot of Italian, Ive made friends and theres no better way
to connect with a language than that!
Like most modern social networks, Meemi provides space for short status messages, where
people share what theyre doing, how their day is going, etc., and there is absolutely no
reason why you cant be doing the same thing!
You need to know how to say all of those things anyway, right? So generate them right
away! Create an account on Meemi, and update it every day. Even if its just one sentence,
make sure you update every day.
Write about how the weather is today. Tell the world what youre having for dinner. Share
your mood. Tell people about that movie you watched tonight. Sure, maybe it sounds boring
but these are essential parts of communication that you need to understand and be able to
do in Italian.

The time required for you to make a one-sentence status update every day is trivial. There is
no reason why you wouldnt have time for this exercise, and I guarantee that this one simple
thing will make an enormous difference in your skill with the language.
And it wont stop there. When you update your status, youll get comments from others.
Eventually youll have friends, and conversations, and more interesting things to talk about
and learn from... and it will all happen naturally. When you become a part of a social
network, you will see how Christmas and birthday wishes are sent. You will see how people
congratulate each other on good news, and how they console each other for bad news. You
will see jokes and puns and slang and all the things that give you a sense of understanding
and control of a language, and you'll have the opportunity to pick them up gradually... and
without studying!

Lang-8
I also mentioned the web site Lang-8 earlier. This is perhaps one of the best, most useful
tools ever for learning a language, because in order to use it, you must create in your target
language. But once you do create something, you get all the benefit of several helpful
people to give you corrections on your mistakes, and explanations of things you dont
understand.
Those corrections and explanations are indeed helpful, but nothing does as much for
improving your skill as the simple fact of sitting down every day and writing something!

Try to make a habit of writing something, anything, at least every day or two. It doesnt have
to be a long, intellectual dissertation on the molecular properties of nuclear fission. Just take
a moment to describe something that happened in your day, or something you want to do,
or some detail of your life.
The people of Lang-8 will be happy to help you, regardless of what you write even if its
just a series of unrelated sentences. Trust me, Ive done it!

What to write?
Now I know youre thinking, I dont know what to write. Ive heard that excuse a thousand
times and Ill probably hear it a thousand more. But the answer is actually quite simple: you
know what you dont know. So you need to write what you dont know... thats how youll
learn it!
There are a lot of things you need to know. When in doubt, pick one of these ideas below
and write something about it:

Professions
Doctor, pharmacist, dentist, chef, baker, policeman, teacher, postman.

Clothes
Pants, shirt, t-shirt, dress, skirt, suit, socks, shoes, pajamas, coat, jacket, hat.

Furniture
Chair, sofa, bed, table, desk, dresser.

Activities
Soccer, running, skiing, tennis, riding, baseball, football, basketball, swimming.

Weather
Rain, sun, snow, wind, hot, warm, cold, cloudy, fog.

Transportation
Car, bus, trolley, metro, train, plain, motorcycle.

Food
Breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, milk, bread, eggs, cheese, meat, chicken, fish, sausage,
fruit, vegetables, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, dessert, cake, pie.

Dont pick one topic and then write about all the sub-topics at once. Just pick one item. In
other words, dont sit and write a whole paragraph about professions, listing each
profession. The only thing that will accomplish is clouding together all those professions in
your head.
Instead, pick just one item and write your thoughts about it. Select one profession and write
your opinions of it. Choose one activity and write you experiences with it. Select one item of

clothing and write about shopping for it. Change it up every day. Keep related topics
separated by time. This gives each item a fair opportunity to occupy a part of your brain.
And remember, you dont have to write a long dissertation in fact, its better if you dont,
because corrections are easier to get when the text is shorter. And when you write less, you
wont get burned out. Just write a paragraph or two. But try to do it every day, or at least as
often as possible.

Tasks
The best way to reach fluency in another language is by doing all the same things you did to
learn your own language. Imagine you live in Italy. What might you have to do? Here are
several suggestions:

Wish someone a happy birthday, merry Christmas, etc

Listen to a CD in Italian
Make a shopping list in Italian
Check the travel time between Rome and Florence at trenitalia.it
Write a status on a social network
Find the weather in Venice on libero.it
Learn the words to a song
Watch an Italian cartoon
Shop for clothes on an Italian web site

Cook dinner using an Italian recipe

Read a news article at corrieredellasera.it
Write an email
Search Google for a list of the years best Italian pop artists
Browse books at amazon.it
Watch an Italian movie
Check tourist information at vesuviana.it and find out the costs to ride from Naples to
Pompeii and then on to Sorrento
Learn about the Colosseum at www.il-colosseo.it
Browse tre.it, tim.it, and tmobile.it, and compare options for phone and data plans
Read a chapter from an italian book
Search Google for the names and locations of hospitals in Bologna
Find the rankings of football (soccer) teams in Italy

Conversations
In the last chapter I talked about consuming Italian, and in the first half of this chapter, Ive
talked about producing in Italian, but eventually you need to do both. Thats how
conversations work. Its input and output all at the same time, and this is perhaps the most
important part of fluency.

Remember, you are what you do. You cant study your way to fluency, you have to use the
language. You can only become fluent after first being not fluent, and that means having
those embarrassing, slow, error-filled conversations. Nobody can start out being perfect. But
after a lot of practice, you can learn to speak with very few mistakes.
I recommend building yourself up over a gradual progression of more difficult tasks. You
already know youre going to be slow at first, so start by producing paragraphs at Lang-8.
Later, start writing regular status updates at Meemi. Eventually, youll start having
interactions in the comments on Meemi, and your conversation speed will slowly start to
increase.
Eventually, you will make contacts with people over these and other sites. Ask for skype
names, and start chatting! Chat is a great reality simulator, because it allows you to have a
real-life conversation, but at a slower speed, where you still have time to gather your
thoughts, or even look up words when you get stuck. And when your chat partner says
something you dont understand, theres always Google Translate.
Finally, after your chat speed gets faster, you need to start having actual conversations.
There are several ways to do this. Remember to take advantage of every opportunity and
to create opportunities to use the language whenever possible.

Skype
Often, the easiest place to start finding conversation is over Skype. If youre already using
Lang-8 and Meemi, then youre already connected with plenty of Italian speakers around the
world. All you have to do is exchange Skype info and start talking! This is especially good to
do with people you meet through Lang-8, because with them its already clear that youre
learning, and theyre already ready and willing to help you.
When youre first starting out with voice chat over Skype, be mindful of the fact that its often
rather hard to understand and help a new speaker, so try to keep the conversations short
until you and your speaking partner develop a good rapport.

Friends
Obviously, the most convenient way to create opportunities to practice and improve your
Italian is if you have any friends who are Italian, or who speak Italian. If you do have such
friends, use every moment to speak to them in Italian, and to hear them speak to you. Ask
them for explanations of things you dont understand, and have them teach you fun little
phrases and expressions.
During my one year path to fluency in Italian, perhaps my favorite part was Tuesday nights
when I would get together with my friend from Bologna. We usually met in Italian restaurants
and pizzerias, ate Italian food, drank Italian wine, and spoke Italian all night long. I learned a
lot about Italy, and Italian culture, and also had a lot of fun and laughs and silly memories.

But perhaps you dont have any friends who currently speak Italian. So create one!
Challenge one of your friends to learn it with you. If you learn side-by-side, you will always
be at a similar level of skill, meaning that neither of you will ever become bored with the
simplicity of the conversation. As your skills increase, so will the complexity of your
conversation. And when one of you discovers something new, the other will surely benefit
from it as well.
When learning Spanish, I had such a friend. We both had a very similar skill level with the
language, and we both took on the challenge of becoming fluent at the same time. We spent
a lot of time in Mexican restaurants, we listened to Latin-American music, we cooked
hispanic meals and watched Spanish movies together. We left each other voicemails in
Spanish, and had endless conversations in Spanish, and both really pushed each other to
reach our goals quickly and successfully.

Meetups
Italian meetups are a great way to practice and improve your skills, mostly because they
involve direct, live, in-person use of the language. You get the pressure of actually using
what you know, and the feedback of someone listening and responding to you. And most
meetups consist of a wide array of speakers, from students to natives.

Craigslist
Sometimes it seems like theres nothing that cant be found on Craigslist. If the times or
locations for meetups dont work out for you, you can most likely find someone on Craigslist
who will happily meet with you to practice your Italian.
Start by placing an ad looking for an Italian-speaker to meet for coffee and conversation in
Italian once per week, or something like that. There is a good chance you will find someone.
If that doesnt work out, and youre willing to spend a few bucks, you can browse the ads for
people offering lessons. When you respond to the ad, write your response in Italian, and say
politely that you dont want lessons (though you may need some help) but what you really
want is conversation, so that they understand right from the start that the conversation is
whats important to you.

Unconventional places
There are lots of unexpected places in every city where you can find opportunities to
practice your Italian skills. If you visit enough Italian restaurants, youll find one where the
owners and staff actually are Italian, and you can practice your skills there. Maybe there is
an Italian cultural center in your city, where you can go and find books and other information
about Italy, and if so, there is a high probability that the people working there are Italian.
One sure place where youre guaranteed to find an Italian speaker is if there is an embassy
or consulate in your city. Granted, they probably dont want to talk about the weather, but if

youre looking for a way to get 5-10 minutes of practice in Italian, you could go to the
consulate and ask for some information about visa requirements.
When you put your mind to it, you can find endless ways to practice. All you have to do is
try!

You are what you do

More than anything else, you need to use a language if you want to learn it. Youve just
finished reading a lot of information and advice about how to learn Italian, how to improve
your vocabulary, how to practice, where to find people, and more.
If theres anything that stands out most, I hope its the importance of connecting with, and
using, Italian. Thats the only way youll ever become fluent. You cant study your way to
fluency. You only become fluent after first getting through your time being not fluent.
So dont be embarrassed. Dont worry about your pride. Get out there and start speaking
Italian. If youve made it to the end of this book, you know enough to be speaking,
understanding, reading, writing, and using the language. And you know how to find people
with whom to use it.
There are no excuses left. The only way to improve is by using what you know, while you
learn what you dont know.

Contact me
Im glad you took the time to read my book, and I hope that youve found it helpful. I
welcome your opinions and your advice, as well as any questions you might have.
Dont ever hesitate to contact me! I cant guarantee that Ill always be available, but Im
happy to make time for everyone who asks for my help. I will gladly spend a few moments
talking to you in Italian over Skype, or chatting with you, or just answering your questions or
helping you to understand something thats confusing you.
Email: yearlyglot@gmail.com
Skype: yearlyglot
Web: www.yearlyglot.com
Also, please send me your success stories! I cant wait to hear about other people who have
learned to speak Italian fluently in one year or less.