ItalianItalianoOverviewReviewPracticePhrasebook

Standard Italian

Greetings to a real conversation in ninety days.

The full ninety days, built on the same plan as the French course. Italian is almost entirely phonetic — what you see is what you say — so you can start speaking on day one, which is unusual and worth exploiting.

Today

Day 1
0
to review
5
new items
1
minutes, roughly
Start — 5 cardsPractise out loud

The next fortnight

0 of 183 items in your deck.

Intervals: 1 · 3 · 7 · 14 · 30 · 60 · 90 days. Each item you get right moves one step further along.

The weeks

Adding a week puts its items into the review deck, a few a day.

week1
Greetings, courtesy, numbers 1–20

Almost everything this week is a fixed chunk. Greetings are learned whole, not taken apart.

Noun · newVerb · newPronoun · newFixed chunk · new
0 of 18 items in your deckComfort
week3
Common nouns: the home and food

Thirty-odd everyday objects, each learned with its article — and Italian has seven of those, so the article is the work.

NounVerbPronounArticlePrepositionAdjective · newQuestion word · newFixed chunk
Comfort
week4
First sentence frames: I have, I want, I would like

You stop collecting words this week and start combining them. Almost no new vocabulary — reuse Weeks 1 to 3 inside these frames.

NounVerbPronounArticlePrepositionAdjectiveAdverb · newConjunction · newQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort

Milestone

  • —Greet, thank, apologise, and count to twenty.
  • —Introduce yourself — name, age, town, family, retirement — in four or five sentences.
  • —Name thirty-plus everyday home and food objects, with their article.
  • —Order a drink or a meal politely with vorrei, and ask for the bill.
week6
Questions: directions, prices, times

Magenta week. Seven question words, and enough fixed phrases to find a station, ask a price and understand the answer.

NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort
week7
The past: recounting yesterday

The passato prossimo. Two ingredients — a helper verb and a past participle — and you can talk about anything that has already happened.

NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort
week8
The near future, and joining sentences together

Italian barely needs a future tense for near plans — the present does the job. Connectors then turn a list of sentences into a story.

NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort

Milestone

  • —Conjugate high-frequency verbs in the present for io, lei, lui/lei and noi.
  • —Ask for directions, prices and times using the question words.
  • —Recount yesterday in the passato prossimo, with both avere and essere.
  • —Talk about near-future plans using the present tense and a time word.
  • —Tell a short connected story using e, ma, perché, quindi, and prima / poi / dopo / infine.
week9
Your own life: hobbies, health and opinions

Phase 3 stops teaching structures and starts using them. This week also brings the one Italian verb that works backwards.

NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort
week10
Listening: following the gist

Mostly technique rather than vocabulary. The goal is the gist of a clip, not every word — and being comfortable with that is the actual skill.

NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort
week11
Speaking: five minutes a day, out loud

Fluency over accuracy. The aim is to keep talking, not to be right.

NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort
week12
A real task, and everything reviewed

No new grammar. One real thing done in Italian, and a look back over ninety days.

NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort

Milestone

  • —Talk about your hobbies, your health and your opinions using piacere, adorare and the opinion frames.
  • —Follow the gist of a two-minute Italian clip using the three-step method.
  • —Deliver a five-minute monologue on the five-part scaffold, with discourse markers, without correcting yourself mid-sentence.
  • —Complete a real task in Italian — read a menu, write a message, or book a table.

The ninety days

Days 1–30

Foundations

Greet, introduce yourself, name everyday things, and order politely.

Days 31–60

Everyday exchanges

Hold a short two-way conversation without notes.

Days 61–90

Going it alone

Handle a real trip — travel, shops, small talk, the unexpected.

Where Italian hides things

Piacere runs backwards

Mi piace il calcio is football is pleasing to me. The thing you like is the subject, so the verb agrees with it and not with you: mi piace il cinema, mi piacciono i libri. The same applies to mi fa male. Once you accept the structure it becomes automatic, but not before.

Seven ways to say the

Italian picks its article by the sound that follows: il, lo, l', la in the singular, i, gli, le in the plural. Lo and gli go before s+consonant, z, gn and ps — lo sport, lo stomaco, gli studenti. Learn every noun with its article attached and you will never have to work it out.

The article stays with the possessive

La mia casa, il mio libro — Italian keeps the definite article in front of the possessive, unlike French and Spanish. The exception is a single family member: mia madre, mio figlio, with no article. Add one back the moment it becomes plural: i miei figli.

The disappearing pronoun

Italian normally drops io, tu and lei because the verb ending already carries them. Blue appears far less often than in French. When a pronoun does show up, it is there for emphasis — io pago, I'll pay — which is worth noticing rather than ignoring.

The voice

Every word on the site is clickable. It speaks through a voice installed on this computer, so it costs nothing and works with the wifi off — but it does need a Italian voice to be installed. Without one the audio stays silent rather than read Italian aloud in an English accent.

[Ciao]

Looking for voices…