Introduction

Italian belongs to the Romance branch of the Indo-European language family. Like the other Romance languages, it is a descendant of Vulgar Latin spoken by the Romans and imposed by them on the peoples under their rule. Italy map. Therefore, it shares many characteristics with other Romance languages. It is spoken by 57.7 million people in Italy with a total worldwide 64 million speakers in some 29 countries. Italian language, Italian Italiano, Romance language spoken by some 66,000,000 persons, the vast majority of whom live in Italy. It is the official language of Italy, San Marino, and Vatican City. Italian is also an official language of Switzerland, where it is spoken in Ticino and Graubünden cantons by some 666,000 individuals.

Italian dialects form a continuum of intelligibility, with the geographically distant ones being mutually unintelligible. In modern Italy, people communicate mostly in regional dialects, although standard Italian is the only written language. It is estimated that about half of Italy’s population does not speak standard Italian as a native language. Most speakers of the dozens of regional Italian dialects come in contact with standard Italian in elementary school.  Before starting, each student chooses their Italian language level (from A1-C1) and the number of minutes they want to spend using the app every day. In each lesson you learn 14 new Italian words about many different themes (all of them useful for everyday life), such as business, travel, emergencies or words to use in general conversation. There is also a section dedicated to Italian slang, which isn’t very common in traditional lessons or in apps, but is very useful for students who want to live in Italy, helping you get to grips with the most authentic part of the Italian language – communicating with native speakers.

In this blog, we’ll discuss the best apps to learn Italian: 

1. Busuu:

Busuu is a brilliant app for Italian students because it offers so many unique aspects which optimise learning. The app teaches Italian vocabulary about a range of subjects for all levels: family, free time and food for beginners; and more complex themes such as politics, nature and life choices for more advanced students.

2. Duolingo:

Duolingo is a very famous app which is very fun and easy to use and quickly improves your Italian language level using effective and well designed activities. The user can choose a daily goal for the number of minutes that they want to use the app every day (5-20 minutes) which helps to minimise the risk of students becoming overwhelmed and giving up with studying Italian.

3. Babbel:

Babbel is a free app where you can choose your level of Italian to suit your needs based on whether you are a beginner or more advanced student. Babbel is a very widely used app thanks to its simple and easy to use layout, which includes a lot of images to help you remember words as well as realistic dialogues to complete on a variety of different subjects like Italian culture and the world of work.

4. Drops:

Drops is an app which I personally have used and continue to use thanks to its fun and easy to use design which makes the process of learning Italian more simple and seem more like a game than work. There are 50 themes to choose from which are all actually useful for daily life in Italy, vocabulary for going to the doctors, to use at school or vocabulary that is useful for conversations between friends, like pets, sport and emotions, rather than more mundane subjects taught in other apps.

Choose the best one for you and get going.