You may be interested in learning Italian for a variety of reasons. Perhaps you are going on a vacation to Italy or intend to live there. Maybe you have Italian ancestry or plan on getting a job that involves work with Italians. Whatever the reason may be, learning Italian can be a very rewarding experience.

If you already speak another romance language like Spanish or French, you will find that Italian is very similar. Many linguists estimate that the lexical similarity between Italian and French is 89% while the lexical similarity between Italian and Spanish is 82%. Even if you have only studied Spanish or French in high school, you will find that the grammar is quite similar and easy to pick up.

For English speakers, Italian is often remarked to have a “pleasing” sound to it, most likely due to its great use of vowels and especially its use of vowels at the end of words. Unfortunately, this stress of vowels also means that listening to Italian seems like an incomprehensible stream to most English-speaking Italian language learners just beginning their studies.

Tricky Italian points for English speakers include determining gender for nouns since words are either of the masculine gender or of the feminine gender. Additionally, verbs are conjugated with very different forms depending on the subject of the sentence.

Word order, however, is quite similar between Italian and English. Both languages are subject-verb-object languages and because the syntax is similar, it will be very easy for you to start putting together your own sentences in Italian even as a learner.

Italian is a popular language to study so there is no shortage of materials to use for learning Italian. You can choose from computer software programs to traditional style classroom classes. Depending on your ultimate goals, you will want to find the tool that makes most sense for you.

Whatever your Italian language goals may be, remember that to succeed in learning any foreign language, you should make a commitment to learning the language everyday and continue to apply effort to your studies for as long as it may take to reach your goals, even years if you are aiming for fluency. But don’t forget to have fun at the same time! Make sure to enjoy Italian by listening to Italian music and watching Italian films. These cultural elements can be the most fun and most rewarding parts of learning Italian.

Author Robertson Kunz has a language learning guide: fast language learning. Italian learners: learn fluent Italian.

If you are thinking about studying Italian, you are probably wondering how long it is going to take you to achieve fluency. In this article, I will explain how you can achieve basic fluency in Italian in 3 months or less by following this plan.

The truth is that many students end up taking Italian language classes for many years and still cannot understand real Italian conversation. I also know many students who have achieved fluency in Italian or in other foreign languages in less than 3 months.

Before I reveal this plan, I should note to you that if you already are fluent in another romance language like French or Spanish, you will find this much easier to achieve. Even if you have only studied a foreign language but not necessarily a romance language, you will still get an extra boost. On the other hand, if you have never studied a foreign language before, you may find this a bit hard at first because you are not used to learning foreign languages.

The bottom line is that it is possible to learn fluent Italian in 3 months but it will require a commitment to studying each day.

Let’s look over some statistics so that you can see how this goal is achievable.

In European languages, the 1000 most commonly used words make up 85% of common speech. The 3000 most commonly used words make up 95% of common speech. In order to achieve basic fluency in Italian, we need to hit the 95% mark which means a total of 3000 words.

Additionally, many experts in languages say that in order to become fluent in languages like Italian, Spanish or French, 200 hours of active study time is required.

So, because you are going to study for 3 months, you will have 90 days of study. This means learning about 33 new Italian words per day. If you devote 2 hours to this study process, you will get 180 hours of study in by the end of 3 months which is basically the 200 hours recommended by language experts.

You might think that learning 33 new Italian words per day is too hard. But consider the fact that you are going to be studying 2 hours everyday. This means you learn 16 words per hour or about 1 word every 4 minutes.

Also, consider that there are many cognates between Italian and English like the word “international” is “internazionale” in Italian. I bet that only took you 3 seconds or less to learn.

Of course, you’ll probably have a little less time to study vocabulary since you will want to devote time to reviewing words that you learned on previous days and also look into practicing forming sentences and making sure your grammar is correct. All in all, you should have enough time to reach your basic fluency goal in Italian.

If you are able to study Italian actively for 2 hours per day and reach the goal of learning 3000 Italian words by the end of 3 months’ time, you will have achieved basic Italian fluency. The important thing to remember here is that you need to stay committed each and every day to your Italian studies and take each step seriously. If you are able to stick with it each day and progress, then you will attain fluency in Italian.

The descendent of Latin, the language spoken in the Roman empire, Italian is now spoken by more than 60 million people. Unlike its ancestor, however, Italian has grammar that is considered much easier to learn.

Many people learn Italian today for many different reasons. Getting an edge in the job market by learning Italian or learning simply because one has Italian ancestry are two of many reasons. Many people learn Italian for an upcoming vacation or intend to retire to Italy. In any of these cases, learning the Italian language can be a great experience.

Knowing another Romance language already can greatly speed up your Italian studies. The grammar between Italian and other romance languages like Spanish and French is very similar and almost exactly the same in many cases. If you studied a romance language even in high school, you will find many similarities to help you.

Italian is considered to be a very beautiful language. English speakers know that Italian has much emphasis on vowels including the fact that many, many Italian words end in vowels.

Tricky Italian points for English speakers include determining gender for nouns since words are either of the masculine gender or of the feminine gender. Additionally, verbs are conjugated with very different forms depending on the subject of the sentence.

Similarities, however, include word order. English and Italian have very similar word orders and both are considered to be subject-verb-object languages. You will find that it is very easy to start making Italian sentences even as a beginner.

Italian is a popular language to study so there is no shortage of materials to use for learning Italian. You can choose from computer software programs to traditional style classroom classes. Depending on your ultimate goals, you will want to find the tool that makes most sense for you.

Before you begin learning Italian, you should remember to sit down and make a serious commitment to learning the language. It can be a tough process but if you stick to it, you will be greatly rewarded. On the other hand, don’t just simply do grammar exercises and read textbooks, you should also enjoy yourself in Italian, too! Watch an Italian film or buy an Italian language CD. You will find that these activities can be some of the most rewarding when learning Italian.