Is Italian hard to learn? If you’re considering learning this stunning language, you’ve probably asked yourself that very question.
As I’ll show you below, mastering Italian can indeed be a tough process. That’s due to its intricate grammar, amazing regional diversity, and unusual spelling and pronunciation system.
I’ll also highlight, though, how Italian is worth learning anyway, given that it’s tied to a fascinating culture and that there’s no shortage of resources for you to rely on.
By the end of the post, I bet you’ll feel ready to take up the challenge!
First off, no language is actually hard to learn
The fact that infants slowly pick up the language(s) they’re exposed to until they become native speakers speaks volumes about human beings’ inherent ability to master any language.
I’m not here to BS you; some languages have more complex grammar structures, while others have sounds you may not be familiar with or use an alphabet you must decipher beforehand.
Still, you’ll need to factor in tons of other elements, like your age, language learning skills, environment, and motivation when you first dive into a foreign language.
Mastering a language is not a walk in the park and normally takes a few years of dedication. Buy you shouldn’t let that discourage you. To the contrary, use that to prove to yourself that you can do anything you put your mind to!
Why is Italian hard to learn?
1. Local languages have a great impact on how Italian is spoken.
Italy is home to 30+ regional languages that are widely spoken to this very day. In major northern and central cities like Milan, Turin, and Rome, these languages or dialects are restricted to seniors. In southern Italy and in the countryside, though, they’re widespread.
Regional differences were enormous before television evened out speech patterns nationwide, but they remain striking in several parts of the language and especially along the North-South divide.
For example: in the North, “I went to the theater last night” would be Sono andato a teatro ieri sera, while in the South you might as well hear Andai a teatro ieri sera.
Pronunciation is affected too: Neapolitans infamously say pronounce scuola (“school”) “sh-cuola”, and the Florentine are mocked for turning coca-cola into “hoha-hola”.
2. The informal and formal registers are a world apart.
Italians are strict about formality when addressing other people, unless they’re close enough to be more casual with one another.
You’ll use tu (literally “thou”) with friends, family, and coworkers you’ve known for some time and lei (which also means “she”) with everyone else. Up until your 30s, it’s normal to use tu with anyone your age, yet other than that lei is the way to go.
To make matters worse, voi (the plural form of “you”) is often used in place of lei in southern Italy. In order to master Italian, you’ll need to learn how to conjugate verbs in all three persons (plus I, we, and they) and memorize all the pronouns and gender agreement rules that come with them.
3. Double consonants change the meaning and pronunciation of words.
When I first started learning Italian, I thought double consonants were a mere spelling oddity just like in English. It took more than a year until a native teacher told me bello can’t be pronounced as if it had a single L: you have to hear both.
In some cases, the addition of a letter can create a new word altogether, as in
- bara (“casket”) vs. barra (“plank” or “slash”)
- capelli (“hair”) vs. cappelli (“hats”)
- casa (“house”) vs. cassa (“case” or “cash register”)
- caro (“dear” or “expensive”) vs. carro (“cart”)
- nono (“ninth”) vs. nonno (“grandfather”)
- note (“notes”) vs. notte (“nights”)
- odio (“hate”) vs oddio! (“oh God!”)
- pala (“shovel”) vs. palla (“ball”)
- rosa (“pink”) vs. rossa (“red”)
A double S is no big deal, but the rest will take some training. What’s more, for those who’ve never studied a Romance language before, there’s the extra challenge of rolling the R.
4. Verbs can be highly irregular.
In Italian, you have three basic conjugation patterns, so amare (“to love”) works like cantare (“to sing”); credere (“to believe”), like leggere (“to read”); and partire (“to leave”), like dormire (“to sleep“).
Yet, while you’d conjugate “I sleep” as io dormo, capire (“to understand”) wouldn’t become io “capo” — but rather io capisco.
Capire’s, however, is a recurring pattern. On the other hand, “I go” (from andare) becomes io vado, and “I put” (from porre) turns into io pongo, just to give two casual examples.
Multiply that by six persons and at least the seven most common simple tenses and you have enough material for years’ worth of studies.
5. The verb ‘to be’ has two translations.
This is shared by several Romance languages, including Portuguese and Spanish. In Italian, the notion of “being” varies according to the perception of time.
If something is considered permanent or long-lasting you use the verb essere. Otherwise, when talking about a temporary status, we use stare.
So “I’m tall” translates as io sono alto, whereas “I’m fine” is rendered as io sto bene. Likewise, you’ll use essere for present perfect verb phrases (e.g. io sono partito means “I’ve left”) and stare for continuous ones, as in io sto correndo (i.e. “I’m running”).
This might seem pointless at first, but as you learn the language you’ll come to realize the differentiation makes Italian a bit more philosophical and interesting.
6. The subjunctive mood is still a thing.
In English, the subjunctive mood survives in a few structures with the verb to be, such as “be that as it may” and “if I were you”.
Other than that, the majority of speakers wouldn’t naturally say “It is important that you be here by noon”, though that would be absolutely correct. With all other verbs, the subjunctive coincides with either the present or past tenses depending on the sentence.
In Italian, that’s not really the case. The subjunctive is often mandatory after the conjunction che (i.e. “that”) and features two simple and two compound tenses.
7. Nouns, adjectives, articles, and verbs are gendered.
Why is “the book” il libro, i.e. a masculine noun, and “the church” la chiesa, a feminine one, in Italian? One word: etymology. In Latin, the language that gave origin to Italian, all nouns had a gender, and Italian ended up inheriting that peculiarity.
In words that refer to people, the distinction is easier — you say il professore for a male teacher and la professoressa for a female one. On top of that, the final letter frequently gives the gender away, as O is typically masculine, and A is usually feminine.
Exceptions seem more widespread than the rule, however. You say il pianeta (“the planet”) and il dramma (“the drama”), but la moto (“the motorcycle”) and la foto (“the photo”).
8. The combination of a preposition and an article results in a whole new word.
So-called combined propositions have a logic to them, as you can see here:
- a (“to”) + il = al / a + la = alla / a + lo = dello
- di (“of” or “from”) + il = del / di + la = della / di + lo = dello
- in + il = nel / in + la = nella / in + lo = nello
That said, at least four forms are absent from the list above: three for plural nouns, and another for singular ones that start with a vowel.
This is hardly the most complex thing about Italian grammar, yet it’s another obstacle you must overcome on your path toward fluency.
9. Word stress can seem random.
In Italian, you’ll need to memorize that sabato (“Saturday”) is pronounced sabato (not sabato), and balena (“whale”) is balena (not balena).
You’re only sure about the stress of a word when it’s on the last syllable, which demands an accent mark as in lunedì (“Monday”) and città (“city”).
True, that’s a lot more than you get in English, where word stress always seems random — after all, why do you pronounce “technology”, “historic”, and “politics” that way you do? God only knows.
Why Italian is still worth learning
1. Italian is among the easiest languages to learn for English speakers.
Now is Italian hard to learn for English speakers? While the answer to that question is subjective to a certain extent, we can say most other languages are actually harder than Italian.
The Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. State Department classified major world languages based on how difficult it is for English speakers to learn them.
Italian, alongside languages like Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, and Dutch, should require approximately 600 hours of studies before you achieve fluency, or about three years if you commit four hours a week to it.
For the sake of comparison, it takes around 1,100 class hours to master Russian, Hindi, or Greek, and a mind-blowing 2,200 hours to speak Arabic, Chinese, or Japanese fluently.
2. There are countless learning resources a single click away.
Learning Italian (or any language for that matter) asks for motivation, consistency, and patience. Yet the best way to do it should involve as many tools as possible.
Luckily, you don’t have to put your life savings into hit-and-miss materials like you did in the olden days. The internet is awash with textbooks and storybooks that fit all pockets, as well as numerous speaking apps that are totally free.
Take some time to read the user reviews before buying an ebook or subscribing to an app, then get down to business right away!
3. It is closely related to other languages you may already know.
Language aficionados will often wonder whether they should learn Italian or Spanish, or Italian or Portuguese, and a bunch end up eventually studying more than one language from the same linguistic family.
Those three languages, alongside French, Romanian, and Catalan (just to name the most popular ones) all derive from Latin, and as such share many traits when it comes to pronunciation, vocabulary, sentence structure, and grammar in general.
Although you may be prone to some mixups along the way, knowing another Romance language before learning Italian (or studying another one afterward) will certainly give you a head start.
4. You’ll fall in love with the culture.
There’s a long list of benefits of learning Italian. That said, my favorite is by far the marvelous culture you’ll gain access to.
From award-winning movies to binge-worthy novels and from catchy pop songs to crazy reality TV, you’ll never get sick of exploring the Italian multiverse.
Studying Italian will easily turn you into a better cook, an art buff, or to the very least be a lot of fun if you let the culture win you over.
Final thoughts
I’ve listed nine reasons Italian is hard to learn, which almost feels unfair — but I had to give you the real deal.
To make up for it, though, I also tried to show you how — despite a tricky spelling and convoluted grammar — you should make the effort to master it anyway.
Italian is as beautiful as the country where it’s spoken and the culture it embodies. With a strong commitment to the end goal and the right resources, you’ll be fluent faster than you can say buongiorno.