Introduction:

Italian is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. Italian is the closest national language to Latin, from which it descends via vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Taking into account both national and regional languages, it is seen that Italian and Sardinian are together the least differentiated from Latin.  Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland (Ticino and the Grisons), San Marino, and Vatican City. It has official minority status in western Istria (Croatia and Slovenia).

Italian is a major European language, being one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and one of the working languages of the Council of Europe. It is the second most widely spoken native language in the European Union with 67 million speakers (15% of the EU population) and it is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens.

• Tip 1: Start with Italian Pronunciation

The Italian language has a very simple phonetic system with just a few tricky sounds and a very predictable and consistent way of pronouncing vowels, consonants, and sequences of sounds. Basically, it’s particularly easy to sound good when speaking Italian!

A very smart approach to learning Italian is to start with pronunciation. You’ll master it in no time and it will give you the best “value for money”. You can have the broadest vocabulary and the most impeccable grammar, but if Italians can’t understand you when you speak, all of that goodness will go to waste.

Focusing on pronunciation is fun and it will give you incredibly fast results.

• Tip 2: Make the Most of Shower and Pillow Time

One of the best ways to improve your Italian is by getting into a habit of spending some time in the morning and evening talking to yourself. That may sound a bit crazy, but you’ll be amazed at how helpful this easy technique can be.

In the morning, start with a statement about what you’re going to do that day. You can use a simple present tense, e.g. “oggi vado al cinema” (today I’m going to the cinema). If you know more Italian you can start to add in more information, for example when you’re going, who else is going, or what you’re doing before and after the cinema.

• Tip 3: Listen to Native Speakers

One tip I would give to all of you interested in learning Italian is to listen to native speakers talking. Even if you are an absolute beginner. Spontaneous conversation, which is produced by native speakers, is the best way to get started.

The conversation is in itself very spontaneous and immediate, so native speakers are pressured to produce language in the easiest way they know-how. This means that following easy conversation between native speakers will motivate you to act, in this case, speak, like them. The emulation game starts!

After listening to a recorded conversation of your choice, try to repeat what they say on-screen or audio. Stop and play as many times as you like, up until you feel confident enough to record yourself and listen to your recorded voice speaking Italian. This should help you avoid the initial block beginners often feel towards the active part of learning a language, that is speaking.

• Tip 4: Discover the Italian You Already Know

We’ll let you in on a secret – Italian is easier than you think. Let’s try a little experiment. How do you say the word “fantastic” in Italian? Wave your hands around like an Italian and do your best Italian accent.

Did you guess fantastico?

If you did, bravo, your guess was correct!

Around 58% of English words come from Latin or Romance languages. This means that that 1000s of English words are similar to Italian words. These words are called cognates, and they’re easy to learn and remember.

• Tip 5: Talk to yourself

Make a schedule for learning

Tweak your schedule, if it has been a little too heavy considering the time that you have at hand so that it works for you. In the last week of the first month, I recommend you keep practicing and adding to your flashcard decks, resume listening to an Italian podcast or radio show, Italian playlists, and conversations with native speakers this week. You will also find your listening to have improved significantly and you would be able to identify spoken words better. So why not try some of the great YouTube videos available.

• Tip 6: Track your progress

Review yourself, your progress, your learning to see how far you’ve come in just a few weeks, even if you weren’t able to study as much as you wanted. You’ll be amazed by your progress and find it hard to believe that at one time, you could barely pronounce Annyeong! (As long as you studied consistently and didn’t give up, you won’t be looking back!

• Conclusion 

So, above are the basic steps to get started. Following these will surely help you to ace your learning process and reach the goal. Also, Multibhashi offers the best courses for Italian you can check that out. These are six smart ways which if followed diligently, in no time you will be patting your back! After the bookish knowledge, you gain, one dilemma which we all face is with whom to practice with. And thus, the role of Multibhashi becomes even more prominent as here you can get a trainer with whom you can practice speaking and reaffirming everything that you have learned so far. It is particularly a boon for introverted people like me who don’t feel comfortable in a group and still want to see rapid results.

So don’t worry and start learning!!!