What is the fastest way to learn conversational Italian?

Italian is the national, or de facto national, 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). 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 (3%). Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania and the United Kingdom) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is approximately 85 million. Italian, Italiano or lingua Italiana is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. Italian is, by most measures together with Sardinian, the closest language to Latin, from which it descends via Vulgar Latin. Italian is a major European language. It is 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. Italian is the main working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

Italian is known as the language of music because of its use in musical terminology and opera; numerous Italian words referring to music have become international terms taken into various languages worldwide. Its influence is also widespread in the arts and in the food and luxury goods markets.

Find conversation partners for yourself to start talking in Italian. 

Begin your search from the neighborhood, by attending a Italian get together, by shopping in a Italian grocery shop,  volunteering for the Italian community around yourself. In absence of all these, you could find one online at Hellotalk, Italki, Conversationpartner, Languagepartner, Tandem both as paid and free help.

Don’t feel shy to make mistakes. 

Beginners must give away the inhibition of making mistakes. If it’s going to deter you to talk; you will never be able to talk! So I suggest,  embrace your mistakes, know it’s okay to make mistakes during learning, and trust yourself to be better with each passing day.

Join a group course. 

I recommend all serious learners of Italian to opt for classroom study, online or offline, but in group sessions. In this manner you would have multiple people to learn with and you won’t feel awkward making mistakes around them.

Maintain a journal or a diary conversation. 

When you are learning a new language you need to gradually step up your learning. The first step should be starting to talk in small sentences that help you convey the same meaning as the complex ones. Fill your diary or journal with connectors, fillers, commonly used phrases instead of just words!

Read aloud. 

Read the newly acquired vocabulary loudly to yourself in the mirror or to your pet or a plant to feel secure while making mistakes in pronunciation. Try talking in sentences as though you are conversing with someone. Read the transcript of the audio clips you have heard numerous times before, and try to talk along the audio picking on accent and pronunciation.

Shadowing. 

To stay interested in learning Italian by keeping it light! Watch Italian movies with subtitles in English or your native tongue(if available)and enable Italian titles to movies in English and your native tongue(if available). Speak up the dialogues as if you were the original speaker, maintaining the tonal variation, pitch, accent and pronunciation. 

One of the rewards or advantages of learning a language such as Italian is that it opens new horizons and gives the possibility to communicate and interact with Italian language speakers. Another reward is that one gets to read, understand and appreciate Italian literature, which contains many interesting and significant masterpieces. So at first it may not be all rosy, to learn Italian, but as one studies and gets to know the language better, you will get the rhythm of the language and literature, and learning will start to be more and more interesting!

There’s an amazing new way to learn Italian! Want to see what everyone’s talking about!

Click here.