How hard is it to learn Italian?

The short answer

Italian is easy to start. It is pronounced almost exactly as it is written, and much of the vocabulary is familiar from English. The difficulty comes with the verbs and the small words: articles, prepositions and helper verbs that all have to agree with each other.

The U.S. Department of State, whose language school is widely known as the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), puts Italian in Category I, its group of languages close to English, and at the short end of that group.

What English gives you for free

English is a Germanic language and Italian comes from Latin. But English has borrowed so heavily from Latin and French, and from Italian itself, that much of the vocabulary is familiar.

• Italian words English already uses. Piano, opera, solo, tempo, studio, pasta and espresso are Italian. Balcony comes from balcone, umbrella from ombrello and volcano from vulcano.
• Endings that convert. English -tion is -zione: stazione, informazione, nazione. English -ty is -tà: università, qualità, attività. English -ble is -bile: possibile, terribile.
• Spelling you can trust. Italian is pronounced almost exactly as written, and nearly every word ends in a vowel.

Basic word order is subject, verb, object, as in English. Maria mangia una mela is Maria eats an apple, word for word.

What is actually hard

The difficulty in Italian is the verbs and the small words.

• Verbs change with the person. Parlo, parli, parla, parliamo, parlate and parlano are six present-tense forms of to talk, and the word for I or you is usually left out. The most common verbs are irregular: vado, vai, va, andiamo, andate and vanno are all forms of andare (to go).
• Double consonants. English writes double letters but does not pronounce them longer. Italian does, and it changes the meaning: nono (ninth) and nonno (grandfather), casa (house) and cassa (checkout).
• Seven words for the. Il, lo, l’, la, i, gli and le. Which one you need depends on gender, number and how the next word begins: il libro (the book) but lo studente (the student), i libri but gli studenti.
• Two helper verbs in the past. Ho mangiato (I have eaten) but sono andato (I have gone). With essere the participle changes too: a girl says sono andata.

Nouns have gender, the subjunctive is in daily use (penso che sia vero, I think it is true), and prepositions fuse with the article: di and il become del. The spelling has a twist for English readers. The letters ch are a k sound, as in chi (who) and bruschetta, while c before e or i sounds like English ch, as in ciao. Watch for false friends too. Camera is a room, and parenti are relatives, not parents.

How long it takes and how many people use it

The State Department trains U.S. government staff in about 60 languages and publishes how long each usually takes. Italian is listed at 24 weeks. Category I as a whole runs 24 to 30 weeks, or 552 to 690 class hours, so Italian sits at the short end with 552, while Spanish and French are listed at 30 weeks. That is the time usually expected to reach level 3 in speaking and listening on the government’s ILR scale, with 23 hours a week in class and 17 hours of self-study. A school course moves far more slowly, but the comparison between languages is still useful.

Ethnologue’s 2026 list counts 65.6 million people who use Italian as a first or second language, which puts it in 32nd place among the world’s languages.

How to start

• Begin with the most common verbs. Essere (to be), avere (to have), andare (to go) and fare (to do) are irregular and turn up in almost every sentence. Learn them in the present tense first.
• Learn nouns with their article. Put lo studente and la casa on your word list, not just studente and casa, and you get both the gender and the right article along with the word.
• Say the words out loud. Pronounce the double consonants clearly when you practice. It makes the spelling easier to remember.

How you study matters more than which language you picked. Read more in The basics of learning a language.

Practice Italian vocabulary with Learn It

Learn It is a free iPhone and iPad app with no ads that quizzes you on vocabulary. You type in your word list and practice with Spelling, Multiple choice or Flashcards. Spelling makes you write the whole word correctly, double consonants included, and after each round you can practice just the ones you missed.

There are also ready-made quizzes, such as Everyday verbs in Italian, Food and drink in Italian and Colors in Italian. All of them are listed under Italian.