Practical tutorial of Italian conversational language for beginners. Learning Italian from scratch

In this section you can find and download tutorials for free Italian.

Book: Practical Italian course
Dobrovolskaya. Yu.A.
Chapter: language training
Type: home tutor
Pages: 460
Year: 2006
Format: pdf
Size: 2.1 mb
Description: This electronic edition is addressed to both students and anyone who wants to learn the language. Exercises are full of turns of necessary speech, most texts abound with dialogues. which distinguishes the textbook as a practical guide to mastering the language.
Excellent classic textbook of classical Italian. Everything the diligent learner needs to master the language at the highest level.
The textbook material is presented in a clear, concise, accessible and concise manner. The book contains the necessary information on the history, geography, economy and culture of Italy. Much attention is paid to everyday vocabulary.

Book: Italian self-instruction manual. The fastest Italian.
Format: PDF
Number of pages: 130

The manual is intended for intensive teaching of the Italian language - oral speech, reading, understanding and communication. Covers vocabulary on 12 major everyday topics. Includes grammar information needed to communicate fluently in Italian. Contains country-specific information about Italy. Unlike many other textbooks, this one focuses not on grammatical information, but on vocabulary - in the book you will find the most common in modern language words and expressions that can be useful in practical situations, when communicating with native speakers, on a business or tourist trip, etc. Instead of traditional lessons, the textbook consists of twelve weeks, each of which consists of seven days, and the day is divided into morning, afternoon and evening. We recommend practicing every day: a quarter of an hour a day will be enough to begin to understand and speak Italian in three months. On the last day of each week, you will be offered exercises to consolidate the material covered during the week. Answers to the exercises are given in the section "Keys to the exercises"

» Learning Italian from scratch. Easily!

One of the most popular types of questions on services like "Mail.ru Answers" or "Google Answers" are questions from people who are interested in studying certain foreign languages, but decisive, before starting classes, "test the ground" and find out what they need to mentally prepare for.

With this article, I would like to address, first of all, precisely such people. However, it will be interesting in itself for those who wish to broaden their horizons.

The article is divided into 2 antonymous parts:

The main difficulties that arise when learning this language.
Language characteristics, on the contrary, simplify (sometimes significantly) its study.

Characteristics will be given in comparison with other major European languages (mainly English) for greater clarity.

I will start talking about Italian with a few interesting facts. Modern Italian can be considered an artificial language, which was developed after the unification of the country in the 60-70s. XIX century based on the Tuscan dialect. Even during the First World War, the Italians from different regions they could hardly understand each other, and it was then that the imposition of official Italian began especially actively.

Now I can say from my own experience that no one has problems with understanding. Dialets have not gone away, but now they are used mostly in the plane of personal, friendly (if friends are from the same region) and family relationships. The vast majority of the population speaks Italian without any problems, the only exception is provincial Italy, and even then it is mainly its elderly contingent, which communicates with each other almost exclusively in dialect (for example, the conversations of Trentino pensioners living in mountain valleys, an Italian from another risks not understand completely).

In fact, many dialects are essentially independent languages. For example, it is very interesting that the Sicilian dialect is a direct descendant of Latin itself, and has nothing to do with Italian. And, for example, the Sardinian language is completely independent language, having its own dialects.

Why is it easy?

How does one start learning any language? Of course, from phonetics. For those who know English, it will not be difficult to read Italian competently - probably, in terms of phonetics, Italian is the easiest language in the world. There are 21 letters in total (which is 5 less than in English language) plus combinations of letters that form sounds that are easy to reproduce in Cyrillic (gn - н, gl - л, sc - sh, etc.) and will never cause such despair among beginners as the same English sound "th" or its the Spanish analogue of "c" / "z" (without this word in Spain you will not be able to pronounce correctly, for example, the word "beer" (cerveza)), not to mention the nasal sounds of the French language, without knowing which you will not be able to correctly pronounce even the most elementary words like "bon" (good).

With regard to the relationship between vowels and consonants, the situation against the background of the Russian language with a gigantic host of phonetic rules seems simply elementary: vowels are pronounced exactly the same as on paper, consonants do not change or soften, and the reading of some of them is regulated by a few very elementary rules.

Why is it hard?

The incredible ease of Italian phonetics, unfortunately, goes sideways for native Russian speakers, whose speech is "captive" to a huge number of Russian pronunciation rules that are automatically put into action when speaking in Italian.

The Italian ear is very sensitive. Often, when changing one sound, they refuse to understand the word as a whole. This is especially detrimental to the acane, the significance of which in the matter of mangling Italian words can be overestimated:

"doloroso" [doloroso], but by no means [dALArozo].

"mortalita" [mortalita], nor not [martalita].

The softening of consonants sounds especially terrible in Italian:

"livello" [livello], here "l", sounds the same as in the word "scrap", but not like in the word "rainstorm".

That is, the difficulty for the Russian speaker, paradoxically, lies precisely in the ease of pronunciation, that is, in the absolutely accurate reading of each vowel and consonant of Italian words.

In addition, do not neglect the meaning of double consonants, of which there are a lot in Italian.

It is strongly not recommended to pronounce at the pace of a high-speed train. If the name of the famous musician Ramazzotti is spelled with two "t" and two "z" (Ramazzotti), then it should be pronounced like this: not [ramozotti], but [ramazzotti].

Why is it easy?

Italian language is analytical. This means the absence of cases, the function of which is performed by prepositions. Despite the obvious lexical similarity with Latin, Italian is nevertheless very far from Latin in terms of grammar: in Italian, as I said, there are no 6 cases that terrify students, there is no neuter gender and there are many other differences.

The absence of a case system always makes life much easier. Those who studied German understand this. Although there are only 4 of them, even this number is enough to cause panic attacks in beginners when they see tables of case declensions of German articles, adjectives and numerals.

Let's make a visual comparison:

English: My brother's younger sister gave her mother 2 pieces of bread.

Italian: Mia sorella minore di mio fratello ha dato 2 fette di pane alla sua mamma.

As you can see, in the Russian version we did without prepositions at all, while the analytical structure of the Italian language means a very active use of them, which, of course, is easier to learn even for native speakers of the "mega-synthetic" Russian language.

Why is it hard?

One more initial theme, which it would seem should not cause problems - articles. The rules for their use are seemingly simple, but in fact, native speakers of Russian and other languages who are not "burdened" with this language tool make a lot of mistakes here, which greatly disfigures Italian speech.

There is a lot to be learned just by cramming. Using English as a guide will not help matters - there are too many differences.

I'm going to the theatre: Vado a treatro (no article).

I'm going to the cinema: Vado al cinema (with the article).

Without going into details, we can especially dwell on the fact that in Italian articles are obligatory for possessive pronouns, which contrasts with most European languages. Compare:

English: I see my car.

German: Ich sehe mainen Wagen.

French: Je vois ma voiture.

Spanish: Veo mi coche.

English: I see my car.

Italian: Vedo la mia auto (la is the article, mia is mine).

As you can see, only in Italian, when using a possessive pronoun, is it worth paying attention to the corresponding declension of the article referring to the noun.

Why is it easy?

The derivation of many Italian nouns (in particular, household items) is a great example of how often the language does not "steam" and goes in the most straightforward way.

Many words are a banal "verb + noun" link in an almost completely modified form, which greatly simplifies their memorization:

portare (carry) + cenere (ash) = portacenere (ashtray).

portare (carry) + container (container) = portacontainer (container ship).

portare (carry) + bagagli (luggage) = portabagagli (trunk).

lavare (wash) + stoviglie (dishes) = lavastoviglie (dishwasher).

aspirare (inhale) + polvere (dust) = aspirapolvere (vacuum cleaner).

spazzare (sweep) + neve (snow) = spazzaneve (snowplow).

asciugare (wipe) + mani (hands) = asciugamani (towel).

And many other words.

In addition to the simplicity of word formation of such nouns, their ease lies in the fact that they are immutable, that is, the transition to the plural is grammatically displayed only by changing the article.

Why is it hard?

The subjunctive mood (congiuntivo), the use of which in Romance languages is approximately functionally similar, presents difficulties for Russian speakers. Strongly (very strongly) generalizing, the subjunctive mood means that the information provided is either doubtful or emotionally colored. Sometimes Italians deliberately replace the subjunctive with the indicative in order to give their words more power and authenticity, but in doing so they make a grammatical error.

In practice, the use of the subjunctive means that you must always remember the appropriate forms of the verb when expressing hope, expectation, emotion, dissatisfaction, etc.

For example:

Information presented as fact:

Black car = L "auto e nere.

Now let's add a little "personality factor":

I think his car is black = Credo che la sua auto sia nera.

Both in the first phrase and in the second - 3 persons, singular. the number of the verb "to be", but as you can see, in the second version it has changed: it is not already stated here that the car is really black, but only our opinion, that is, that we believe that it is black.

Complicating the situation with the use of the subjunctive is the fact that it is used in a huge number of the most used phraseological units, for example, after the words "although", "in order to", "in order to" and so on, and you need to get used to it, otherwise, the speech will not only be illiterate, but even "difficult to understand."

Why is it easy?

You study almost all other romantic languages at the same time - they have such similar vocabulary. In addition, in learning Italian, knowing English vocabulary, which also contains many Latin elements.

Here are just a thousandth of such words:

Russian - English - Italian

allow - permit - permettere

stunning - splendid - splendido

huge - enorme

page - page - pagina

apartment - apartment - appartamento

terrible - terrible - terribile

accurate - accurate - accurato

casual - casual - casiale

diary - diary - diario

pen - pen - penna

powerful - potent - potente

and many, many other words.

What's even more interesting. In addition to vocabulary, you will also find a huge number of grammatical similarities with other romantic languages as well. Their number is incalculable: from the most common to the conjugation of irregular verbs.

Post navigation

Where to begin? These lessons will help you increase your Italian vocabulary. All Italian lessons are divided into levels and modules. When you first set foot on the path of learning Italian, immediately press the button "start lesson". If you feel that you already have the so-called "school vocabulary", press the button "start test"- so you will find out what level of Italian your knowledge roughly corresponds to. Over time, take the test again and check your progress!

How to learn Italian on this site?

Lessons are designed in such a way as to increase vocabulary. At the same time, you can not only learn how the word is spelled, its translation and transcription. You can hear how it is pronounced. Pronunciation is what distinguishes a native speaker from learners from the first seconds of communication. We can learn Italian from books for as long as we want, know the grammar and many rules. But pronunciation will be difficult. Books cannot convey how a particular word is pronounced in Italian. Even a word read by a tutor can be pronounced differently by native speakers. Now, in the 21st century, anyone can learn Italian words with pronunciation for free! Start right now!

For your convenience, the lessons are divided into 4 levels:

Italian: Part 1
Italian: Part 2
Italian: Part 3
Italian: Part 4

Italian self-instruction manual - instruction

Do you still not know what level of Italian you have? Take 10 minutes to test. The result will tell you which lesson to start learning from.
Go to the lesson that the test suggested or select any other lesson from the dropdown menu at the top of the page.
Before you will be a table of words in Italian, their translation and transcription. On the left there will be buttons, by clicking on which, you will hear the pronunciation of the word in Italian. Naturally, you will need headphones or speakers.
Start with a few lessons a day. This will allow you not to overwork your brain with new words. If you notice that the words are already familiar, feel free to skip the lesson and move on to the next Italian lesson.
Are you wondering how your vocabulary has changed? Take the quiz again to see how the Italian tutorial has changed your vocabulary.

How can this site help me?

The main goal of the site is to increase vocabulary with words with the correct pronunciation. The emphasis is placed on pronunciation- something that is always missing when you do not communicate with native speakers. Another feature of the site - registration is not required. We do not collect your personal data, we do not send mailing lists to mail and instant messengers. Here you can learn italian completely free.. Feel free to recommend it to your friends! We recommend bookmarking the site in case you accidentally lose the link. We decided to call the tutorial that way, because this way of learning Italian is suitable for lazy people, or those who cannot bring themselves to sit for an hour over the lessons. One lesson here will take you no more than 15 minutes. Thus, you will increase your vocabulary in just 15 minutes a day. Enough reading already, it's time to start the first lesson!

This site is dedicated to self-learning Italian from scratch. We will try to make it the most interesting and useful for everyone who is interested in this beautiful language and, of course, Italy itself.

Interesting about the Italian language.
History, facts, modernity.
Let's start with a few words about the current status of the language, it is obvious that Italian is official language in Italy, the Vatican (simultaneously with Latin), in San Marino, but also in Switzerland (in its Italian part, the canton of Ticino) and in several districts in Croatia and Slovenia, where a large Italian-speaking population lives, Italian is also spoken by some of the inhabitants on the island of Malta.

Italian dialects - can we understand each other?

In Italy itself, even today you can hear many dialects, sometimes it is enough to drive only a few tens of kilometers to encounter another of them.
At the same time, dialects are often so different from each other that they may seem completely different languages. If people from, for example, the northern and central Italian "outback" meet, then they may not even be able to understand each other.
What is especially interesting is that in addition to the oral form, some of the dialects also have a written one, such as the Neopolitan, Venetian, Milanese and Sicilian dialects.
The latter exists, respectively, on the island of Sicily and is so different from other dialects that some researchers distinguish it as a separate Sardinian language.
However, in everyday communication and, in particular, major cities you are unlikely to experience any inconvenience, because. today the dialects are mostly spoken by older people in rural areas, while young people use the correct language that unites all Italians. literary language, the language of radio and, of course, television.
It may be mentioned here that until the end of the Second World War, modern Italian was only a written language used by the ruling class, scientists and administrative institutions, and it was television that played big role in spreading the common Italian language among all the inhabitants.

How it all began, origins

The history of the formation of modern Italian as we all know it is closely connected with the history of Italy and certainly no less fascinating.
Origins - in Ancient Rome, everything was in the Roman language, commonly known as Latin, which at that time was the official state language Roman Empire. In the future, from Latin, in fact, the Italian language and many other languages \u200b\u200bof Europe arose.
Therefore, knowing Latin, you can understand what a Spaniard is saying, plus or minus a Portuguese, and you can even make out part of the speech of an Englishman or Frenchman.
In 476, the last Roman emperor Romulus-Augustula abdicates the throne, after the capture of Rome by the leader of the Germans Odoacar, this date is considered the end of the Great Roman Empire.
Some also call it the end of the "Roman language", however, even today disputes still do not subside, because of what exactly the Latin language has lost its relevance, due to the capture of the Roman Empire by the barbarians, or was it a natural process and in what language itself spoke towards the end of the Roman Empire.
According to one of the versions, ancient rome by this time, along with Latin, the spoken language was already widespread, and it is from this folk language of Rome that Italian comes, which we know as Italian of the 16th century, according to the second version, due to the invasion of the barbarians, Latin was mixed with various barbarian languages and dialects and it is from this synthesis that the Italian language already originates.

Birthday - first mentioned

960 is considered the birthday of the Italian language. The first document is associated with this date, where this "proto-folk language" is present - vulgare, these are court papers related to the land litigation of the Benedictine abbey, the witnesses used this particular version of the language so that the testimony was understandable to as many people as possible, up to this point in all official papers we can see only Latin.
And then there was a gradual spread in the ubiquitous life of the vulgare language, which translates as a folk language, which became the prototype of the modern Italian language.
However, the story does not end there, but only becomes more interesting and the next stage is associated with the Renaissance and with such well-known names as Dante Alighiere, F. Petrarch, J. Bocaccio and others.
to be continued...

Online translator

I suggest that all guests of my blog use a convenient and free Italian online translator.
If you need to translate a couple of words or a short phrase from Russian to Italian or vice versa, you can use the little translator on the sidebar of the blog.
If you want to translate a large text or need other languages - use full version online dictionary, where more than 40 languages are on a separate blog page - /p/onlain-perevodchik.html

Italian self-instruction manual

I present a new separate section for all learners of the Italian language - Italian Tutorial for Beginners.
Of course, it is not easy to make a full-fledged Italian tutorial from a blog, but I try to give the most convenient and logical sequence of interesting online lessons so that you can learn Italian from them yourself.
There will also be a section - an audio tutorial, where, as you might guess, there will be lessons with audio applications that can be downloaded or listened to directly on the site.
How to choose an Italian language tutorial, where to download it, or how to study it online, you will find information about this in my posts.
By the way, if someone has ideas or suggestions on how best to organize such a tutorial on our Italian blog, then be sure to write to me.

Italian via Skype

Secrets of how to learn Italian via Skype for free, whether a native speaker is always needed, how to choose a teacher, how much it costs to learn Italian via Skype, how not to waste your time and money - read about all this in the section "Italian via Skype.
Come, read and make the right choice!

Italian phrasebook

Free, Fascinating, with a native speaker - a rubric for those who want to learn words and phrases on certain topics.
Join, listen, read, learn - voiced Italian phrasebook for tourists, shopping, airport, everyday situations and much more
in section "

There was a great desire to learn Italian language? Do you want to listen to Luciano Pavarotti and understand him in high tones? Or order in an Italian restaurant with confidence that you are ordering the right one? Statistics show that Italian is the fifth most studied language. On the this moment Italian is spoken by more than 70 million people. Another 150 million speak it as a foreign language. Therefore, Lingust simply could not bypass him. And here is what he offers you.

On the pages of the lessons of this section of the site you will find a specially created for beginners from scratch version of the tutorial from Celeste Zawadska & Maria Majdecka () by learning italian. Its task is to familiarize students with Italian pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary in such a volume that, having mastered the material of the self-instruction manual, they could master colloquial speech and independently read journalistic and works of art medium difficulty. To this end, both dialogues on everyday topics and adapted excerpts from works have been introduced into the tutorial. fiction. The self-instruction dictionary covers about 3,300 words from various areas of everyday, socio-political and cultural life. Well consists of 52 lessons + phonetics lesson. The keys to the lessons contain translations of Italian texts and assignment resolutions. The key is activated when the mouse is moved over it: .

First, we get acquainted with the meaning of words and idiomatic turns and expressions (it is not recommended to memorize words and turns taken out of context);
Having familiarized ourselves with the vocabulary, we proceed to reading the text and try to understand its content. If there is audio for the text, a player appears on the page, listen to it several times and carefully monitor the pronunciation;
We learn grammatical material and perform oral and written exercises; then we check the correctness of their execution with the help of keys and eliminate the mistakes made;
Having familiarized ourselves with the vocabulary and mastered new grammatical forms, we proceed to an independent oral, and then a written translation of the Italian text into Russian. The translated text must be checked with the help of the translation placed in the keys, and the mistakes made must be eliminated. The Russian translation can then be used to “reverse” translate from Russian into Italian;
The final stage of the work is re-reading the text, playing its content aloud and recording the reproduced text on a voice recorder to compare it with the text of the textbook. In the case of collective learning of the Italian language, the authors advise to reproduce dialogues by roles several times, changing roles each time, and also to use descriptive texts for conducting conversations.

Go to → list of lessons ← (Click)

Reasons for learning Italian

Why do you think Mozart composed his operas in Italian and not in German?
Many people consider Italian to be the most beautiful language. You can check this opinion and compare with French.
in italian the largest number words that describe food - they love it so much.
Watch films by Fellini, Visconti, Pasolini without subtitles.
You can read "The Divine Comedy" (La Divina Commedia) as Dante wrote it.
According to UNESCO, more than 60% of the world's art treasures are located in Italy.
Italy is a real magnet for tourists. In 2004, Italy topped the list of favorite holiday destinations in Europe, with a 339% increase in the number of tourists in a year!
Italians are an unusual people, very sociable and will gladly show you their country, provided that you will (try to) speak Italian with them!
The Italian language is closest to the Latin language, the common progenitor of all Romance languages. In English, a huge number of words of Latin origin, this will facilitate the study of the vocabulary of both languages.
The Italian language has the most exact correspondence between letters and sounds (Russian does not count, of course). Slightly further away from it is Spanish.
Increasing business integration with suppliers and customers from Italy requires knowledge of the Italian language, as they have difficulty or reluctance to speak English.
Art, fashion, design, opera, cooking, etc. If you are planning a career in these areas, knowledge of Italian is a must!

You must have found something interesting on this page. Recommend her to a friend! Better yet, place a link to this page on the Internet, VKontakte, blog, forum, etc. For example:
Learning Italian