Learn Italian by reading.

The best way to learn Italian is to read real Italian texts with instant tap-to-translate, prioritising the most frequent vocabulary and reinforcing it with spaced repetition. Italian spelling is very nearly phonetic, so reading and pronunciation improve together.
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Lector reading an Italian passage with colour-coded word states and click-to-translate
Native speakers
~65 million
Difficulty (FSI)
Category I
To proficiency
~600 hours
Why Italian

Reasons to start.

01

Around 65 million native speakers and up to 85 million in total, official in Italy, San Marino, Vatican City, and Swiss Ticino.

02

Very nearly phonetic spelling — learn the rules once and you can pronounce a word you have only read, and spell a word you have only heard.

03

The working language of a vast amount of art, music, opera, food and design, and the source of thousands of words English already borrowed.

Bonus: Closely related to Spanish, Portuguese and French, and often partly understandable to their speakers. Of the big Romance languages it stays closest to Latin, so Latin and the rest of the family get easier with it.

Is it hard? How long?

The honest version.

FSI Category I (~600 hours), one of the easiest tiers for English speakers. Spelling maps cleanly onto sound and a great deal of the vocabulary is recognisable. The learning curve is verb conjugation, the subjunctive, and gendered nouns with irregular plurals.
Whatever the category, the method is the same: read a lot of Italian, learn the most common words first, and let a spaced-repetition system resurface them right before you forget. See the method.
A line of Italian

La sera, quando le campane suonano, la gente si ferma nella piazza per parlare e guardare i bambini che giocano davanti alla fontana.

In the evening, when the bells ring, people stop in the square to talk and watch the children playing in front of the fountain.

How Lector helps

Read it. Practice it. Remember it.

The reader (above) turns any Italian text into a lesson — tap any word to translate it, hear it in a native voice, and track what you know. Then frequency-ordered cloze practice locks the core vocabulary in, and mined words push straight to Anki.
Practice

Drill the words that matter first.

Frequency-ordered cloze sentences build the core of Italian vocabulary, scheduled by spaced repetition so each one returns right when you're about to forget it — in multiple-choice or typing mode. Practise listening to native pronunciation on every word and sentence, powered by Google text-to-speech.
Italian cloze practice in Lector with multiple-choice options
Free resources

Free resources to get you started.

The Italian reference data below is free to use on its own. To turn it into a full reading course, self-host Lector for free or start on the cloud from $5/mo.

Italian reference data

Where the Italian dictionary and cloze bank come from, with counts and full licensing.

Browse the data

New to Anki?

A from-scratch guide to spaced-repetition flashcards and loading your first Italian deck.

Getting started with Anki
Questions

Learning Italian, answered.

More on the method, or jump into the docs.
Is Italian hard to learn?

Italian is one of the easier languages for English speakers. Spelling is almost perfectly regular and much of the vocabulary is familiar. The main challenges are verb conjugations, the subjunctive mood, and noun gender.

How long does it take to learn Italian?

The FSI puts Italian in Category I, at about 600 class hours (roughly 24 weeks of intensive study) to reach professional working proficiency. Reading consistently brings everyday comprehension considerably sooner.

What is the best way to learn Italian?

Read real Italian daily, learn the most frequent words first, and reinforce them with spaced repetition. Because spelling and sound line up, reading aloud what you see on screen builds pronunciation at the same time.

Can I learn Italian for free?

Yes. Italian has a huge free corpus — public-domain literature, open courses, radio and podcasts — and free or self-hosted reading and flashcard tools, so a paid course is not required.

Get involved

Learning Italian? You're in good company.

Come chat with other learners on our Discord — swap resources, compare progress, ask questions, and stay motivated while you read your way in.
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Start reading Italian today.

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