Learn Italian with these Resources

To learn Italian, you’re going need a way to learn correct pronunciation, a frequency dictionary to form your base vocabulary, and a good grammar book.  You’ll also benefit from a thematic vocabulary book for specialized vocabulary and maybe a book or two, once you learn your first 1000 words.  Italian’s resources, for some reason, are missing a few parts; there are a lot of books that a very hard to get in the USA, and things like frequency dictionaries simply don’t seem to exist.  Make sure you read the Method sections of the website, then check out some of these recommended resources (pictures are links):

Pronunciation

First off, get a feel for how pronunciation works in English.  The video tutorials here should help.Once you understand that, start working on Italian.

The Pronounce it Perfectly series comes with recordings, all the pronunciation rules, and I’ve yet to see one that wasn’t excellent.   The reviews on the Italian version are generally good, and it’s certainly the only book of its kind that seems to be of any use (The Say It Right series uses “primavera - pree - mah- VE - rah.” Aghh). The problem with this Pronounce it Perfectly edition that it comes with cassettes, of all things! By 2014, I’ll have something to offer here of my own, but until then, consider jumping to the Internet:

If you want to jump to free internet resources, check out Wikipedia’s Italian Phonology page and this pronunciation guide with recordings.

You can also use the DOPO (Pronunciation dictionary), recently released for free with recordings on the net.

At a bare minimum, your goal is to be able to easily hear and say the difference between double consonants and single consonants (caro vs carro and sete vs sette, for example), the difference between the alveolar /n/ (in “cane”) nasal consonant and the palatal /ɲ/ consonant (in “bagno”), and the difference between the palatal and alveolar lateral consonants (“aglio” vs “allo”, for example).  Once you get those, you’re pretty-much ready.  If you want a really perfect accent, you’ll then need to focus on getting the pure vowels just right (no American “O”s), and learning to make an unaspirated /t/ /p/ and /k/’s.  (And if you’re a perfectionist, learn which words voice their double z’s and which unvoice them, as well as which words use closed and open Es and Os.)

Your base vocabulary

I’ve made a base vocabulary list of 400 words to start you off! As I talk about in that article, I find it easiest to translate those words using the short dictionaries at the end of a Lonely Planet Phrasebook; they’re cheap, short and give you good, standard translations for your words (just ignore the ridiculous pronunciation guides). Later, when you’re ready for sentences, you can go back to your phrasebook and grab some.  After that, try some of these resources:

 

Italian is missing a decent frequency dictionary; I have no idea why.  A reader just found one! Yay!

 

Il Primissimo Zanichelli dell’accoglienza is an incredible book. It describes ~1200 words exclusively with pictures and examples that you should be able to understand on your first day. Example pages here. It’s hard to get; I’ve linked to Amazon, but unless someone is selling it used or you’re buying in Europe, it’s pretty expensive. Alternatively, you can try Book Depository, which usually will find you some better prices.

Vocabulary Book:

The Mastering Vocabulary series is a wonderful set of books that contain core vocab for just about any field/topic you can think of.  You can certainly make do with just this book if you can’t get the Primissimo Zanichelli.

The only online Italian frequency list I’ve found is this one, which is a bit messy, but gets the job done.  If someone happens to find a better one, let me know and I’ll put it up here!

Grammar book

I’m a big fan of the Tuffo/Volo nell’Azzurro series, but they’re hard to find in the US (they’re also 100% in Italian, which is not everyone’s cup of tea). You can often find affordable copies on Book Depository (or try Amazon if you’re not in the US). In terms of something a bit easier to get a hold of, the Practice Makes Perfect series is well reviewed and covers the whole body of Italian grammar ata sufficiently high level.  The only problem with this book seems to be with vocabulary, which you’re dealing with already in step 2.

Book-type book

You can read anything that you enjoy.  I’m a big fan of the Harry Potter series in translation, especially if you can find an audiobook version to listen to at the same time as reading.

Other Resources

Anki Decks

I’m making my personal Anki deck available here.  Please read the notes!

Monolingual Dictionaries

You’ll want to move to a monolingual dictionary as soon as possible.  I’ve been a big fan of Hoepli’s and Garzanti’s online dictionaries.  Hoepli’s tends to be easier to understand and Garzanti’s is more complete.  You might need to make an account, but then they’re free.

Assimil

The Assimil series is a sort of special language learning resource that I discuss in a blog post here.  It doesn’t quite fit into any of the categories above, and I think  it works best as a sort of supplemental source of  Italian input.  Here’s the beginner Italian version with CDs.