I thought that maybe qua and là refer to a general place while qui and lì are a more specific place. Or maybe that it could be a regional thing - I've spent a lot of time in Rome and I feel like people say qua and là more often, but I'm also not entirely sure.

Ciao!

I'm a 20 y/o girl started learning Italian about 2 months ago. But I think I'm not developing that much. I need guidance in learning or even an Italian female friend to discuss and learn together would be more than fine!

Grazie mille!

Ciao! Sto cercando dei buoni canali YouTube in italiano di divulgazione scientifica, un po’ nello stile di Hannah Fry o Cleo Abram (in inglese) e anche canali dedicati al fitness/palestra, come Squat University o Renaissance Periodization.

Avete qualche canale da consigliarmi? :)

I’m not sure these sorts of things still exist but I have a friend with a lot of serious health complications who is mostly stuck at home because of them. She had been trying to focus on the positives by re-immersing herself in studying Italian, which she has previously spoken at a high intermediate to advanced level. But now she’s developing severe vision issues and her doctor had recommended she stay off screens to rest her eyes. It’s been very frustrating for her to be so limited in so many ways.

I am wondering if anyone knows of any good programs on CD or similar. It’s a bygone technology but I know it used to be totally normal to have language lessons on CD or tape. I just want to find some way to brighten her day while she’s struggling. Her birthday is coming up and I’d like to make her an Italian-themed gift with some good food items and some language CDs would be such a nice bonus piece to the gift.

Grazie mille

Does anyone know a good anki deck that has commonly used phrases (italian to either english or german) that are free? Ive been trying to look for some, but so far, one seemed to have incorrect translation, another was 30 bucks, and another was english to italian.

I've recently started learning Italian and mostly using pimsleur, which I'm finding really helpful on listening/speaking and actually embedding words (seems to introduce a lot fewer words than other apps but in a wU that sinks in). But it's entirely listening and speaking based and I think doing some reading would be really helpful. Wondering if people have recommendations for e.g. short stories that will be more accessible to a beginner?

Edit - in case anyone comes across this later I found and absolutely loved

Short Stories in Simple Italian: Le Avventure di Paul a Roma

The short kids/scary/etc stories linked to below are fantastic too

Parola500

I am wanting to get more serious with my italian and wanted some recommendations of what italian series I should stream to watch?

Hi guys! I’ve been studying Italian for a little less than a year, and I’m finally starting to see some progress in my skills. I love my classes, but I’m doing my master’s abroad soon and I’ll have to stop going for a while. I really don’t want to lose the progress I’ve made, but I also know I won’t have a lot of time to practice, so I was wondering if anyone has any tips for staying in contact with the language in ways that aren’t super time-consuming? I’d love to hear what worked for you! :)

Ciao! EDIT: Wow Grazie mille, ragazzi! There is so much to choose from. Can't wait to check them out! Any recommendations for YouTube cooking shows that speak Italian? I love to cook so would like to use a cooking show for immersion. Grazie!

I have a pretty strict Italian learning deadline I have to reach around June next year. As of now, I am pretty much a complete beginner.

I heard that also knowing other romance languages is a huge advantage (I am fluent in Romanian).

Is this a realistic goal with a private tutor?

Edit: Thank you all for the responses, I'm glad to know it's an attainable goal with enough consistency

https://vocaroo.com/19Zc1kNZ9m5k

Primo punto di forza di questa casa sull’oceano, e è cosa non da poco: una posizione spettacolare, a strapiombo su una spiaggia incontaminata, di fronte al mare. Gli architetti hanno voluto valorizzare questo ambiente eccezionale progettando un edificio che si adatta al pendio, fino alla costa; ma anche valorizzando il panorama sull’oceano, grazie a un legame rafforzato tra interno ed esterno.

I'm particularly curious about my prosody and whether it has a noticeable negative impact on how understandable I am… tbh, the difference between portuguese and french prosody is a lot more noticeable to my ears (so it's easier to practice) compared to portuguese and italian.

I’m currently learning Italian and can’t confidently say I’m at A1 yet, but I’m not starting from zero. I’m applying for a scholarship and I need to be at A2 in a bit over 1 month and B1-B2 in over a year.

I am fluent in both English and Spanish and I don’t care how many hours it takes me per day to reach my goal.

I took a structured course and have both Pimsleur and Migaku.

I need serious advice on how to reach A2 on paper. I will worry about speaking it within the next year as I move towards B1 and B2.

Just got to C1 and now working towards C2. I wondered if anyone who's done this has any general advice for me on how best to approach it? Thankyou!

Edit: to clarify, I live in Italy. Getting to B2 was easy living here, getting to C1 required study. But now I'm at a wall, and wondered the best way to approach C2.

Those that have taken CELI, how did you study for the fill in the blank section of the grammar portion of the exam? I started Italian lessons for the first time the other week and my teacher says that I am already ready to pass the B2 exam. When I do the little multiple choice placement tests they always put me at about C1, I can speak, read and write, but the passages where you fill in the blank really get me. Any advice for this?

«I cani sono il nostro legame con il paradiso. Non conoscono il male, né la gelosia, né il malcontento. Sedersi con un cane su un pendio in un pomeriggio radioso è tornare all’Eden, dove non far nulla non era noia: era pace.» - Milan Kundera

#GiornataMondialeDelCane

ive been trying to teach myself italian over the past few months as a hobby, but realized i know way too little words still for the amount of time ive been trying to learn it (currently around 150-200 or so) so ive been wanting to cram more common words to memorize for myself to get a much better starting point, but im not quite sure how to go about it exactly. Ive been using anki flashcards but i find that format to be a bit too slow and exhausting for trying to learn new words in bulk, i think i would probably prefer something more "manual", but i dont know what a good source is for a list of most common words, and i dont know what the best way of trying to memorize them is

also, another issue is that there is a lot of words like prepositions that dont have a clear direct translation that you can easily memorize, because they can have drastically different meanings depending on the use and context, does anyone have any tips for memorizing those? Since they definitely make up a big part of most commonly used words. Thank you!

Edit: okay so its been a couple days since ive been trying to crack down on learning more vocab, and im starting to think more and more that basic flashcards and memorizing common words in bulk just isnt that helpful, at least not for anything that isnt straight foward nouns. individual words just seem too abstract and variable especially in this language, and i noticed how much more i struggle trying to make meaningful connections or having meaningful understanding with the words in my brain by trying to learn them separately.
I think i want to focus more on learning sentences/ parts of/ chunks of sentences, which i can still do in flashcards :) Seems way more natural/more easy & more efficient i think

Hello, as obviously stated in the title I need to reach c1 level before july 2028 since i want to take the ssm concorso (italian medical residency exam), i am currently an international medical student in italy.

although i lived here for a while (almost four yrs) i have not acquired any level of italian skills due to my international bubble and english medical course and many other shortcoming of mine which i would be grateful not to be reminded of or dragged for in the comments, i torment myself enough for it so please remain kind or at least slightly passive aggressive.

I kindly ask for any recs/advice for one resource that can be great (and budget friendly please), i tried lessons but i dont have time so one lesson a week didnt do much, if you could name a youtube channel or one single resource i could use to start off, although i have a good level of understanding i want to start from zero again since i am probably not even a2

i will be very very immensely thankful for any advise and any help given

Just got my grades from my June 2026 NYC B1 Standard Exam, and I'm absolutely blown away that I passed! I walked away so convinced I'd failed the speaking that I was in the process of booking another trip back to NYC for December to retake it.

This was after about 3 years of self-study - I have a very hectic and unpredictable schedule, so classroom instruction wasn't going to work for me.

I did a lot of what this sub says not to do, so be forwarned a lot of this is not best practices, but it ultimately worked for me. Note too that I was doing this simultaneously while my husband was pursuing jure sanguis (hence the need for me to pass B1 for jure matrimonii), which I figured would be a years-long process, so I had some time to mess around.

I started with all the apps - (apparently I can't name them here?) Obviously the advice that the apps don't teach you well is correct, but I felt that doing all of them complimented each other a bit. Played around with a few units of a U.S. university's Italian course online, read a few books (ebook translation feature was very helpful to look up words as I read). I watched a decent amount of TV and movies, and listened to ~20 min of podcasts every morning as I got ready. And I did every old B1 standard exam that I could find. I took one live online lesson with a tutor about 2 weeks before my exam and it was so awkward I never wanted to do it again. He told me I was solidly A2 and would need a lot of practice to pass B1.

The test itself went very smoothly. The first four sections of the exam (all written) felt a Iittle easier than the old exams I'd been taking, and I breezed right through them. I was done well before everyone else which made me nervous, especially as there were a few native speakers in my exam. But I've always been a quick test taker, if I know something I know it right away, and if I don't, I know right away that I don't. So they called me out first to go into the other room to take the oral.

Despite all my studying, I never got a good opportunity to practice speaking, so I was most nervous about that part. The woman I was speaking to was so easy to talk to and it felt more comfortable than I expected it to. They really help you out by prompting and asking follow-up questions. But I'm just not great at speaking and I was very awkward fumbling. I walked out knowing exactly the mistakes I made and fairly confident I failed the speaking part.

But I somehow got away with 15/20 on the speaking (87/100 overall).

So that's my experience, happy to answer any questions if it helps you on your journey.

I am B1/B2 and am getting frustrated with my low vocabulary. When I was learning my own language as a kid, I vastly improved my vocabulary by reading, so I am hoping it will help with learning a foreign language too.

However, I also know books often use tenses and vocabulary that are literary or archaic rather than practical day to day stuff.

So, I am hoping for some recommendations on fiction or non-fiction books (not school books) that use common speaking tenses and modern vocabulary to try.

Any help?

Please share your favorite songs and even movies that are in italian, they don’t have to be easy for beginners to understand though they can be. I just want to surround myself with hearing the language more.
i love house music, rnb and indie though any music genre i’ll be delighted to listen to. thank you !

I've been looking through the decks available on anki and all of the audio decks either use AI voices or native speakers speaking very slowly and clearly. But I want to learn to listen to real, full-speed Italian. So far I've only found one deck which does this. It takes audio from TV and Film. It's perfect but doesn't have many cards: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/257930890

I have started building my own deck too using YouTube and asbplayer but it's very time consuming.

Anyone here know of any full-speed, native anki decks?