How to learn Italian well without a teacher?

Italian, Italiano or lingua Italiana is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. Italian is, by most measures and together with Sardinian, the closest language to Latin, from which it descends via Vulgar Latin. 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). 

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 (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 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.

Italian was adopted by the state after the Unification of Italy, having previously been a literary language based on Tuscan as spoken mostly by the upper class of Florentine society. Its development was also influenced by other Italian languages and, to some minor extent, by the Germanic languages of the post-Roman invaders. The incorporation into Italian of learned words from its own ancestor language, Latin, is another form of lexical borrowing through the influence of written language, scientific terminology and the liturgical language of the Church. 

Throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, most literate Italians were also literate in Latin and thus they easily adopted Latin words into their writing—and eventually speech—in Italian. Unlike most other Romance languages, Italian retains Latin’s contrast between short and long consonants. Almost all native Italian words end with vowels, a factor that makes Italian words extremely easy to use in rhyming. Italian has a 7 vowel sound system (‘e’ and ‘o’ have mid-low and mid-high sounds); Classical Latin had 10, 5 with short and 5 with long sounds.

In Italy, almost all the other languages spoken as the vernacular—other than standard Italian and some languages spoken among immigrant communities—are often imprecisely called “Italian dialects”, even though they are quite different, with some belonging to different linguistic branches. 

The only exceptions to this are twelve groups considered “historical language minorities”, which are officially recognized as distinct minority languages by the law. Throughout Italy, regional variations of Standard Italian, called Regional Italian, are spoken.

Nicholas A. Ferroni once said:

“Educators are the only people who lose sleep over other people’s kids”

In reality, teachers have the most important job in the world. Not to forget; that those who have an impact on the children of society have the power to change lives. They influence the lives of those children, and everyone in a society in turn.

IMO, you must seek a teacher for better learning. Online resources, will greatly help you acclimatize yourself with the language, and learn quite a bit, undoubtedly, and you may even be able to ace a CEFR A1 level exam; but language learning isn’t anything like setting up and use your new coffee maker from the instructions and pictures mentioned in the user’s manual.

An important part of language learning is speaking the language besides reading, writing and listening to it. You may be able to reach the closest pronunciation of a word by listening to it from Forvo or Speechace kind of apps, but can you be sure that you will be able to understand all audio clips properly? Imagine you are studying and need to seek corrections in your grammar. Which app can you count on? What about words that change due to context in a sentence? 

Teachers build a healthy competitive environment that stimulates curiosity and peer interest. Highly motivated individuals can achieve this and possibly motivate others, but how many of us are that motivated to teach ourselves and others?

Bottom line, it’s possible to get to a level in language learning without a teacher but not many will be able to make it alone on the road to mastering a language!

Now, let’s look at a situation where you don’t get good teachers around you, or your work timings clash, or you have financial constraints? 

It’s not just the desire to travel to Italy and communicate (though this is probably the most popular reason) but it’s also a great language to learn for professional development, business, relationships and more. For example, careers in Italian translation can be lucrative. Plus, Italian is just a fascinating, fun language to learn. Italian’s an incredibly popular and desirable language for many.

In absence of teachers, I recommend enthusiastic learners to choose from below:

Choose an online Italian course judiciously as per your needs! 

Rocket Languages

Cost: Starts from $99.95 (auto-applied discount)

Rocket Italian has been around for well over a decade, is highly popular (for good reason) with learners. It motivates its students to continue by the inbuilt leaderboard.

Rocket Italian offers comprehensive structured audio lessons that are delivered both, in an easy to follow podcast-style format and audio dialogues in a linear progression.( one can skip lessons if you want to). The course covers all language skills very well (listening, speaking, reading and writing), and their inbuilt voice recognition is one of the most accurate available (it uses Google’s Web Speech technology).

ItalianPod101

Cost: Starts as low as $4 a month.

ItalianPod101 is an app that claims to provide lessons to students through teachers who are guided with a basic roadmap as to what sorts of lessons to teach students. 

While lessons that are grouped thematically, may appeal to some users, but they may be a put off to others who seek to learn in a straightforward grammatical lesson progression. The app allows learners to create their own intuitive path through the materials provided, but that may not 

not be the best way to truly learn a language especially when you are a beginner without guidance.

Glossika Italian

Cost: $30 a month.

Glossika offers innovative language learning lessons that are well-structured and utilize real Italian speakers. Glossika takes the best of many programs and combines them. Rather than learning speaking Italian, syntax and much more through the lens of a more sanitized online speaker, Glossika utilizes genuine speakers for its carefully crafted materials, covering grammar, vocabulary, and more; and such pure Italian dialects may be difficult for some learners to understand at the beginning of their language journey.

Mondly Italian

Cost: Starts at $9.99/month.

Mondly offers learning with a different approach than module-based learning systems; learning by playing games.

Using cutting edge technology, users can choose between VR, Virtual Reality, and AR, Augmented Reality, options in order to fully immerse themselves in a world learning Italian. Users are encouraged to participate in daily lessons in order to accumulate the knowledge necessary for the weekly test. Because users who miss a day are not able to participate in the weekly assessment, Mondly capitalizes on the science behind practices that make apps addictive for users.

Multibhashi

Cost: Starts at INR 4299/month.

I personally recommend Multibhashi as a language learning platform. Multibhashi is a Technology platform that imparts impactful content designed by its empanelled Linguist experts across major Indian languages imparted via Cloud LMS, Cloud telephony, Streaming Video, Realtime Chat, Experiential Learning, Gamification & Interactive evaluation leading to Adaptive Learning by the user. In November 2020, HolonIQ – an authority when it comes to performing and buddying EdTechs, announced its first annual India and South Asia EdTech 100 — a list of the 100 most promising education technology startups across the region from approximately 3000 EdTech teams based in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. And Multibhashi bagged a position in the top 100 Edtech companies in Asia and ONLY ONE FROM INDIA in the Language learning category to be part of HOLONIQ. Multibhashi offers pocket-friendly courses via customized online learning, that’s flexible and allows you to take classes at the convenience of your home, with qualified trainers that are certified Level B2 and above, with diverse experience, having helped thousands of learners who help you improve in the subject by consistently monitoring your progress through pre-assessment, mid-assessment and post-assessment.

Apart from looking to learn from any of the aforementioned courses, students are recommended to step up the learning utilising the following techniques as well

Watch Movies, Talk Shows, TV shows, YouTube, Documentaries with subtitles, Vlogs, Audiobooks, Pocasts

Watching video clips in Italian would not only train your ear, but would also condition your mind to identify Italian words, and pick on an Italian accent. Reading skills develop a lot faster than listening skills. By reading and listening at the same time, users are really able to improve their pronunciation.

Read. Try reading whatever you can get your hands on, Online Articles, Food Blogs, Travel Blogs Health-Related Information, News, Astrology forecast, Recipes, Movie Reviews, Manga on the topics of your interest

To learn any language, reading is a must. But let’s admit it, it’s impossible unless you are a bookworm, such that, even after your day full of obligations, chores, work, you can find time and energy to read.

Spend time in Italian speaking environment

Eat-in Italian restaurants, join Italian conversation clubs, volunteer to serve the Italian communities. 

Another great strategy is to transform your home into an Italian learning hotspot!

Label each object in your home with its respective Italian name so that you are able to identify the object with its Italian name itself, without having to process translations in your head from your native language to Italian. Change the default language of your devices to Italian so as to be able to learn more word and get convenient with Italian words. You always have the choice to switch back to the language of your comfort!

The thing with studying grammar is that there’s a little bit of explanation, but it’s mostly a whole lot of memorization. You have a whole bunch of patterns that you need to stick in your brain. The most effective way to get this information into your brain is a little, and often. Say ‘no’ to two-hour cram sessions. Say ‘yes’ to ten minutes here and there. And this is best provided by a teacher. Remember not everybody is suited well to self-study and it is so much easier when someone, like a teacher, structures your lesson plans and delivers them in a manner that aids you to grasp the concepts easily. It also saves you from reading the entire material, of which not everything may be relevant to your learning. Remember, focusing is the key to learning!