🇮🇹 Italian Recommended Learning Material

Spending time on this page counts as practicing as well. Only that way will you train the essential listening skills, and recognize grammar and morphing patterns.

We can recommend starting with the Basic Phrases, they help you stay in the language. Also, start listen to Mari’s story in Italian. And learn how to train your listening skills by re-watching the same video, while understanding everything through subtitles.

70% of your subscription fee will be reinvested into creating content for the language you’re learning. That’s how we feed back money towards the actual language communities.

We can also strongly recommend creating your own phrase input from conversations with friends or teachers. 30 minutes per week is already enough input for building a solid personal vocabulary. See the section below for recommended teachers. 

Unlock, download and practice these phrasesets in the Lingophant app. Create an account in the app first.

Start with these four sets.

Practice one week, and then use the second part of basic phrases.

Once you know them, a teacher can very effectively help you create your own personalized phrase sets. But these are a perfect start. You’ll see.

How to get started:

1. Download the Lingophant app from the app store.
2. Go to the sharing tab and create an account.
3. Unlock the phrases with the links below. Then download them to your phrasebook.
4. Find 30 minutes every day to memorize them.

To get comfortable listening, experienced learners watch and rewatch videos they understand. Watch this video 5 times, and you’ll build a natural understanding of what Mari is saying. At the end you won’t even need subtitles anymore to understand Italian.

This is the original 15 minute video.

But it’s better to watch these in 30 minutes sessions.

The next time, you should watch this edited version.

And then the third time you can already understand most of it without subtitles!!!

Try it out! Really, it will work like magic.

Also, you can play this audio and listen to it in the background with your phone locked.

More content with double subtitles

EasyItalian also has simple content (they get a bit boring after some time, but hey). Continue with them as long as you enjoy it. Here are four examples, watch once and then rewatch them again in the future 🙂

Language Introduction by LangFocus (warning: great but nerdy)

If you want a perfect pronunciation, watch these videos

Very detailed, you could e.g. (re)-watch in a few weeks whenever you decide to practice listening for 30 minutes.

Instructions for adding double subtitles to any YouTube video.
‼️ It doesn’t work on mobile. Use a computer for your optimal experience.

1. Download / open Google Chrome
2. Install the Chrome extension “LanguageReactor”
3. Open one of the videos, and look for the new LR button under it.
4. Rewatch old videos, by collecting links in a note.

Here are two channels made for learners:

• A lady doing travel vlogs in various Italian places – Italian with Lucrezia
• An Alberto from Brescia who shows some of his life – Italiano Automatico

Then there are channels made for native speakers, once you feel ready for it:

• Vogue Fashion has a getting ready with short profiles in Italian. Their channel has more content in Italian.
• Il Signor Franz, who review tech, travels and random stuff in Italian.
• And the news being summarized in 20m Italian videos in Breaking Italy.

That should be already enough material here to keep you busy for 12 weeks.

Watch them ideally on a laptop, using Google Chrome so you can use the Language Reactor extension.

Here’s a great textual summary of all the grammar by a Duolingo fansite: https://duome.eu/tips/en/it

It’s a great overview in case you start noticing grammar patterns from practicing phrases. This is the usual order: First memorize phrases. Then recognize patterns. Then understand patterns fully. (Science backs this up, it’s called the natural order theory).

Further in-depth Grammar videos (20+) for Italian can be found here on Lucrezia’s channel, they are each about one part of the language.

We can recommend lessons with Irene, a teacher who studied several languages at university, likes literature and cultural exchanges, and has a nice energy.

No matter your level, she can help you and she has worked with our app and students before.