this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
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Ciao amici!

I have some free spare time and I would like to learn Italian! I have memorized/learned Days and basic numbers(Uno-Venti), but I would like go further and have basic conversations.

I'm using duolingo(cracked) and couple websites for vocabulary and as well grammar.

I'm looking for sources that you may know or use, to help me learn Italian.

Thanks in advance!

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[–] rowinxavier@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Others have already pointed to resources, so I will point to an approach instead. You should start by figuring out why you want to learn Italian and really codify those reasons for yourself. Keep those reasons in mind for the next step.

What Italian do you want to learn? Academic? Soap opera? Opera style? Casual conversation with Italian relatives? These all define a different set of Italian language to focus on and different resources to use.

For example, if you just love opera and really want to experience it in the original language you will likely need to learn an older form of Italian, more for the time the operas were written. That means modern TV Italian may mislead you and give you "bad habits"of modern speech that will make understanding operas harder.

That said, if you want to speak to relatives in Italy then the modern language from TV is probably good enough and that resource will be very useful for you.

So once you know which language register you are targeting you can then think about what sources of that language in use you can gain access to. Getting language lesson recordings is something some people find useful, but it is very scripted and rarely actually shows you the language in use naturally, it is very scripted and overly structured.

If you decide you want to be able to speak like a native then the best recommendation I can give is to learn like kids learn. Watch kids shows, listen to the kind of speech kids would hear, and produce your own child speech when you are up to it. Be wrong, make mistakes, and get corrected. Use the language to communicate simple ideas first then expand slowly to more complex ideas. Kids don't understand tense and status, they string things together and get the conjugations wrong and people correct them. They also listen, a lot. Like, an insane amount. Match them.

Once you listen a lot and read a lot in Italian the production will get more natural and native like and the rules can help clarify things, but over saturating yourself in grammar and the like can actually hurt your native level acquisition. Remember that in English you don't think about irregular conjugations of the verb run, you just say run and ran. When you were a kid you probably said "He runned" and people corrected you, so now it feels natural. That is what you want.

As for specific resources, I would recommend looking for Italian sources of ongoing media, for example if you want current culture language look for TV shows and movies that are Italian native, coming from inside their culture. You want the language and the culture together because that is how they exist. Saying you understand Spanish because you know a siesta is a nap is not really correct, and in the same way the fact that lunch is very different in Italy will make a direct translation without cultural context very odd seeming to native speakers.

So broadly, think about what you want, find resources that align with that eventual goal, start as a kid, learn alongside the culture, and make lots and lots of mistakes.

[–] roserose56@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Cool thanks very much!

[–] emb@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

In general, it's usually nice to see what's listed over at https://comprehensibleinputwiki.org/

Here's the Italian page.

[–] roserose56@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago

Great, thanks!

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 3 points 5 days ago

There are some Italian instances in the fediverse too, if you'd wish to try interacting with people there. Some that come to mind are https://feddit.it/, https://diggita.com/ and https://mastodon.uno/.

[–] PunnyName@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

https://www.memrise.com/en/learn-italian

I'm using it to learn Icelandic (at my very slow pace), and I enjoy it more than Babbel. It's free, but they do have paid options.

[–] roserose56@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago

Cool thanks!

[–] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 days ago

thepiratebay dot org/search.php?q=italian+michel+thomas