Ciao! I checked with the moderators before posting.

I’m the developer of Comprehendo, a free browser-based reading-practice app. You choose a CEFR level, read a short Italian passage, answer comprehension questions, look up unfamiliar words, and optionally listen to the passage.

The exercises are generated with AI, so I’m particularly interested in finding passages or questions that don’t feel accurate or appropriate for the selected level.

If you have 5-10 minutes, could you answer at least three questions? No account is required, and the learner practice loop will remain free.

I’d really appreciate feedback on any of these:

• Your approximate Italian level
• The level you selected in Comprehendo
• Whether the passage felt too easy, too difficult, or about right
• Whether any question or answer seemed incorrect or ambiguous
• Whether the word lookup and audio were useful
• Whether you would use it again, and why or why not

You can reply here or via the built-in feedback feature. Please be as critical as you like; knowing what doesn’t work is especially helpful.

https://comprehendo.net/en?learn=it

Thank you!

Hi everyone 🫶 I am an Italian-Canadian girl living in Italy, fluent in Italian and English. I have experience teaching English to both beginners and intermediate English-speaking adult learners. I have been doing this since 2022. I have mainly used Preply, but now I have also opened my own website. I am attaching here the link to the website so that you can have some information and an overview (https://learnitalianwithgiulia.com/). What you see also about the price is flexible, like if you already know the basics and just want to have conversations and quick grammar reviews, etc. we can adjust everything depending on your level and your needs, also the price. Please let me know if you would be interested in having a first free meeting/lesson :) Wish you a wonderful day!

Hello! I started self-learning Italian about a couple weeks ago and I was wondering if anyone could share any helpful apps, books or material ? Anything would be greatly appreciated (preferably if it was free but either way is fine) thank you!

Ciao a tutti! I'm currently studying in Siena and looking to practice my Italian with a native speaker. I'm a native English speaker and happy to help you with your English in return. Would love to connect with someone for regular chats and hopefully make a new friend along the way. Feel free to comment or DM me!

Ho provato due volte a superare CILS scrittura ma non potevo. Com’è il mio livello di scrittura adesso e che cose sono i miei errori?

Hi all! Apologies if this has been answered already in this sub; I looked but I couldn’t find an answer. Also sorry if the flair isn’t right, I wasn’t sure if I should use this one or Apps & Tools.

What are the best workbooks/textbooks/grammar books for learning Italian?
Something beginner-intermediate friendly.

I started learning years ago with Duolingo but I can’t roll my r’s and the app didn’t recognize what I was saying (cameriere…that wretched word).
I ended up switching to Japanese and am now at a communicable level in that. I’m going to continue my studies in that while (re)learning Italian.
I really like the Genki and Marugoto books for Japanese—are there similar Italian equivalents?

I’m not worried about spoken practice cause I have my parents for that. But I want to have a physical book to work through and take notes alongside of.

Any good recommendations?

I am heading to Italy this summer and have been studying a bit on my own (~3 months). Are there any native Italian speakers willing to help me practice before I leave? I'd be down to buy coffee or whatever or just walk for like 30 minutes or even just text if not willing to meet up.

Hi everyone! Just taking a quick moment to share Impik-it, a small web game I developed entirely in Vanilla JS.

HTML

Core Mechanics:

• The game combines classic Hangman with an English-to-Italian translation challenge. HTML
• The system shows you an English word (or a full sentence), and you have to guess the correct Italian translation using an on-screen keyboard. HTML
• Every wrong letter draws a part of the hangman: if the drawing is completed, you lose. HTML

Game Modes:

• Words: Divided by difficulty (Easy 4-5 letters, Medium 6-7, Hard 8+). HTML
• Sentences: You can build the translation by selecting word "tiles" (Easy mode) or by typing the raw text from scratch (Hard mode). PY

Extra Features:

• Active Power-ups: "Lightbulb" (reveals a correct letter), "Band-aid" (cancels a mistake), and "Erase" (removes a wrong letter from the keyboard). HTML
• Global Leaderboards to compete with other players. HTML

Ciao! Any native Italian speakers interested in a language exchange? I speak English and Spanish and would love to make a friend while learning Italian together.

I am about to graduate uni in a month's time, for the past 7 months I have discovered how enjoyable learning a language can be and it's been a hobby of mine. I am around A2-B1 level reading but my speaking is probably a lot lower as it's not something I've had the opportunity to consistently practices
I want to take a few months off before I get a job after I graduate and was considering a trip to Italy for 6-8 weeks and attending a language school as I know there are courses that span for 6 weeks for A2 level.
Is this something that anyone here has done before? Would you recommend this as a method for immersion and learning?

Grazie in anticipo!!

Like would you like it if someone said that to you or not? Would it come across as calming and make you feel supported? Or could it conversely come across badly, like for instance like you’re minimizing the issue or just trying to get them to stop talking about a negative thing that’s on their mind?

I saw this in some text, but I’m not fluent in Italian so I’m looking for more perspectives on how this could come across. Thanks!

I’m trying to get back into studying Italian—-I was originally doing it for an actual benefit, since I spoke it fluently at a young age and lost it, and I have family who only speak it/very limited English, bloodline citizenship eligibility for Italy (daughter of a former Italian citizen, granddaughter of a current one), and a TEFL license to work there at some point. But now I’m trying to study it more for fun/being bilingual or multilingual, but the problem is, now that I’m not surrounded by speakers and I’m relying on media…I forgot how BAD a lot of it is.

I like a lot of the music, but tv seems to come down to soap operas that my nonna used to watch on RAI or just dubs of American shows (eg Dragon Prince). The only Italian YouTuber I like that I’ve been able to find has been Lucia Wang.

I’m a big fan of commentary, vlog/daily life, documentary, & video essay content. I’ve also been getting into gaming (mostly Minecraft, sims, & Pokémon, but also just general “cozy” game content) & tarot (or other witchy/mythological stuff). For those of us learning on YouTube, what are you guys watching?

Ciao a tutti,
amo l'Italia e ci sono stato spesso in vacanza, soprattutto all'Isola d'Elba, che per me è un posto del cuore. Da tempo vorrei migliorare il mio italiano in modo più serio, ma tra il lavoro da insegnante e una figlia piccola in Germania non riesco davvero a impegnarmi per un appuntamento fisso settimanale – né per un corso in presenza né per incontri regolari con un tandem qui sul posto.
Ho provato diverse app (Duolingo, Babbel e simili) e devo dire che sono concepite abbastanza bene, ma le uso un po' alla rinfusa e mi manca lo scambio vero con una persona.
Per questo volevo chiedere: qualcuno potrebbe consigliarmi una piattaforma seria per trovare un partner linguistico online, oppure c'è qui qualcuno che avrebbe voglia di scambiare due chiacchiere ogni tanto? In cambio sarei felice di aiutare chi vuole imparare o migliorare il tedesco – sono madrelingua e insegno per professione, quindi posso dare una mano anche con la grammatica.
Grazie mille!

Ok um so hi, I've just started dating this wonderful guy who speaks Italian, we do communicate in English however I want to learn Italian for him. My first language is English and I struggle with ADHD and dyslexia so most normal ways to learn aren't so easy for me.

If anyone has some tips/willing to help pleaseee tell me!

He is so amazing so I want to do something amazing back even if it's just learning how to say good morning my love or something cheesy. Thanks! ❤️✨

Hello everyone,

I recently created a new online word game for my website, flemma.net, called Defino (available in both English and Italian). Of course, it's completely free, like all the word games on the website.

The idea is simple: you try to guess a hidden word, but instead of random letters, you progressively uncover its dictionary definition. It’s kind of a mix between Hangman and Wordle, and it uses the Wiktionary API for the definitions.

I think it turned out pretty fun and visually quite cute. I might be slightly biased, but it feels a bit on the easy side to me (although I’m pretty good at guessing words from context, so I’m not entirely sure). People I’ve tested it on, however, seemed to find it more challenging.

One interesting thing I noticed is that the game feels quite different switching from English to Italian, since Italian Wiktionary definitions tend to be shorter. I don’t see it as a problem, just a curious difference between the two versions. Maybe this makes it a less useful as a tool to learn Italian, I don't know.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. What do you think of the game? Any feedback is very welcome!

The app is app.repetrax.com, informational page: repetrax.com

Some background info:

For vocab building I used to use memrise, but for some reason it just kept bugging out - it would repeat the same set of words a couple of sessions over. So i got frustrated and just built an Italian vocabulary app for myself. Later I also added French language support for my girlfriend to use as well. I find it useful, maybe some people here would also find it useful, so i decided to release it as an app (Repetrax). Right now it's in the open testing stage so it's free for everyone. The app uses SM-2 spaced repetition algorithm (same one Anki uses).

Current features:

• Quiz mode (multiple choice or recall) + Flashcard mode
• Generic lists/language lists. Language lists (french/italian) have input suggestion that automatically inserts the selected word into the list
• Both directions: front->back and back->front
• Anki .apkg import with media support;
• Youtube transcript import from transcribed italian/french videos;
• Explore lists from public user lists;
• SM-2 SRS with "Again / Hard / Good / Easy" rating
• Word statuses: new, learning, reviewing, known, mastered, weak
• Dashboard with weekly activity chart, streak
• Auto-advance with configurable delay

Some caveats:

• The current plan for all registered users is set to pro. Right now Pro users get 50 MB of cumulative media storage for Anki imports. For text-heavy decks that's fine, but if you're importing audio-rich Anki decks, you'll probably hit the ceiling. S3 costs may add up and I'm figuring out a sustainable model here. We'll see if the 50MB is enough for users or if we need to adjust it a little higher.
• Single Anki file uploads are capped at 10 MB. Most community decks are fine, but some larger ones will be rejected. We can adjust this later as we go, based on the available feedback
• YouTube import only works on videos that have actual captions (not auto-generated). If the video doesn't have .cc availability, it won't work. The current youtube automatic word import is not perfect, sometimes the assigned word values are wonky. I've introduced a scoring system to prioritise some words over others, but it's not perfect and feedback on how we can improve it is welcome.
• The full experience is desktop, but also works on mobile. I also created a native iOS app + Apple Watch app that i use regularly, but still not sure about releasing them, maybe in the future. The watch app in particular I think is going to be a nice way to do quick reviews throughout the day without reaching for your phone.

Why I built specific features:

• Anki support - this one is obvious. The Anki ecosystem has thousands of high-quality Italian decks. I didn't want to ignore that, so I added .apkg import. It parses the SQLite collection, handles media (audio/images), cloze deletions, field mapping. You can bring your existing Anki decks in and study them.
• YouTube import - I was watching Italian YouTube vids and constantly looking up words, but manually entering them was not that comfortable. So I built a transcript extractor: paste a YouTube URL, it pulls the captions, runs NLP tokenization, matches against a local sourced language dictionary (sourced from Wiktionary), and shows you a preview of extracted nouns/verbs/adjectives/adverbs. Currently the dictionaries have these many original words:
  • 🇮🇹 Italian: 106,709 entries
  • 🇫🇷 French: 82,220 entries
• Ios app - the whole reason for creating my own tool was to be able to add words in my lists via mobile, which was not available/convenient with memrise.
• watch app - gimmicky tool that allows quick word reviews out of all the available lists.

The web app is probably sufficient for most people. Before I release the iOS app, I want to make the web experience solid. So some questions for those that plan to try it::

• Is there a feature you'd like to see implemented?
• Is anything about the import flow confusing or broken for your use case?
• Is the 50 MB media limit fine?
• Is it a comfortable tool to use? What's missing to make it more comfortable for you?

All feedback is very welcome. I'm the only developer for this, so it can be quite advantageous - the communication is direct so you can communicate the feature you want implemented instantly. You can write to me through Reddit or through the repetrax.com contact form.

If you find the tool useful, be sure to share it with your friends that might find this useful as well!

I wanted an interesting, simple way to consume Italian language content in a way that sticks. For me, bilingual audiobooks/narrations are very useful - I immediately know whether my interpretation was reasonable, and can identify the meaning of words I haven't encountered. Then, I can relisten to just the Italian audio to reinforce my learning.

I want some thoughts. Does this concept seem useful to anyone else?

Hi!

Having already learned two languages almost entirely through Anki, and now being in the process of learning a third, I’d say I’ve learned a thing or two about language learning and about what makes a deck useful and nice.

Italian is my native language, and for more than a year I had been looking for a deck to help my friends learn Italian, and I was looking for something nice, something closer in spirit to decks like The Ultimate Guide to Russian or 5000 Most Used French Words: good looking decks with audio, examples, structure, and enough information to really know and feel like you're learning the language.

I never found anything that really satisfied me (maybe I missed something, who knows), so in the end I decided to make one myself.

I genuinely think this is one of the most complete free Italian decks currently available online.

Here’s what it includes:

Deck link: AnkiWeb

Backup link: Backup download

If the AnkiWeb link happens to be temporarily unavailable, it usually just means I’m updating the deck. AnkiWeb re-reviews the whole deck even for small public changes, including edits to the description, so it may briefly (24h) disappear from public view. If that happens, the backup link should save the day.

• more than 5000 high-frequency Italian words
• up to 3 examples per card, designed to cover the main meanings and nuances of each word without leaving out key information
• Italian audio for both the main word and the example sentences
• declensions for nouns and adjectives on almost all relevant cards (for example: barca/barche, bello/bella/belli/belle)
• full conjugation for almost all of the 1000+ verbs in the deck, including less beginner-friendly forms like the congiuntivo
• a separate list of nearly 100 sensitive or offensive terms, including insults, vulgar language, slurs, profanities, blasphemous expressions, and some regional or dialectal words that are now widely used in everyday Italian
• division into 5 subdecks, so learners who already know some Italian can start at a higher level instead of from zero
• 3 introductory cards with basic guidance on grammar and on how to use the deck
• a polished, app-like design, very different from the usual plain front/back Anki cards, with buttons, expandable sections where useful, and a more structured study experience

As for my choice to include slurs, profanity, and blasphemous expressions: I included them so learners can recognize them, understand what they actually mean (every swearword/strong word has a "notes" section where I briefly wrote in which context this word could be heard, idioms...), and avoid using them blindly if someone teaches them “as a joke” which does happen. More importantly, I wanted learners to have the tools to notice when someone is insulting them with words that are usually not taught anywhere and that people often have to figure out on their own.

Let’s be honest: once you leave the classroom and step into real life, people often use vulgar words, slang, and sometimes even slurs. That was one of my own frustrations when learning other languages: once I finshed the deck and started using the language... Half of the speech of some people was things I was not used to. But if you’d rather avoid that kind of vocabulary, no worries: I separated it into its own subdeck, so it won’t get mixed in with the rest of the “normal” vocabulary.

I worked very hard on this deck and chose to release it for free because I believe language learning should be accessible and affordable. If you find any mistakes, feel free to message me on Telegram (you’ll find my contact details in the deck and on the Anki page) and I’ll do my best to correct them quickly.

I’ve never released anything publicly before, so forgive me if there are bugs or rough edges. Just let me know and I’ll try to fix everything as fast as I can. I also opened a donation page for anyone who feels like supporting the project or simply showing appreciation for the work behind it.

Happy studying, and thanks for reading!

Cosa significa in italiano “alzare il gomito”?

Hello, i hope you are doing well. I just wanted ask whether anybody has the pdf of Volentieri B2 book, very important. Thank you so much.

Hello everyone, quick question, I'm Brazilian, so, I natively speak Portuguese, I'm starting to learn Italian. Just a random thought that came through my mind recently, what would be easier, learning Italian from Portuguese or from English? I know this might sound dumb for some, but it's a honest question.

as i’m going thru duolingo (ik it’s not the best but i digress) ive noticed that sometimes sentences will have pronouns at the end of them. is there a rule for this or is it completely optional/unnecessary

ex. dove vuole mangiare luca/lui

Ciao a tutti 👋

I'd like to share a tool I've built and I've been using for the past months to learn Italian.

It's called Newspresso, a webapp to learn by reading real the news daily, adapted to your level (A1–C2):

- Contextual explanations and translations for words you don't know
- Audio reading for each article
- Writing practice and vocabulary quiz

It's free and available in early access: https://newspresso.io

Made with ❤️ by an Italian learner!

Feel free to try it out and let me know what you think! 🤗