What should I learn first when I start learning Italian?

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. It 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 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 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. 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.

But to reach this stage you should start by:

Listening- 

Actively listening to, as many relevant audio resources you find – online, in libraries, repeatedly until the pronunciation, the accent, the pitch, the tone and the speed gets embedded in your subconscious. It is not possible to speak a language if you cannot identify the words being spoken. So this is an important step towards your primary goal of speaking Italian. This will help you train your ear, identify spoken words and get you ‘in tune’ with the speech. After multiple listening episodes, take the transcript of the audio clip and read along maintaining the same pronunciation, accent, pitch, tone and speed. You could listen to Podcasts, News, Audiobooks, Italian songs, Talk Shows, Documentaries and much more!

Don’t speak Italian, FluentU, LingQ Italian, Learn Italian with Lucrezia, Easy Italian, “Primo Ascolto” Book and CD Package, Italiano Automatico Podcast, Instant Italian, TuneIn, Online Italian Club, News In Slow Italian, Lyrics Translate, ItalianPod101, YouTube videos, Spotify Italian playlists are a few of the top valuable, effective and interesting audio language learning programs that will catapult your learning!

Speaking-

Shadow what you have been hearing all along in the audio clips now with the transcript. Speak as though you delivered the original dialogues. loud and clear. 

Writing- 

Practice writing the Italian alphabet. They are fairly easy and a lot encouraging once you get the hang of it! Start by learning the vowels and consonants present in the language, moving over to two letter and three letter words. Spend considerable time mastering it before moving on to our last stop! 

Reading-

Read what you are writing in the Italian script after regular intervals to memorize the Italian alphabets and get a grasp on the pronunciation, the accent, the pitch, the tone and the speed. Read children’s story books, magazines or newspapers, new articles on food/travel blog, politics/history, etcetera. Lastly, focus on Grammar, that will further strengthen your grasp of the language.

Remember learning Italian gives you potential access to over 63 million people, a language that is the 20th most-spoken language in the world. And by being able to speak Italian, you will join the 63 million people of the world.

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