Five vowels, and the two letters that change sound
Italian is written the way it is said. Learn the five vowel sounds, then the one rule that trips up every English speaker: when c and g go hard, and when they go soft.
Italian lessons
Learn to read Italian.
We’ll start with how Italian spelling sounds, then the words and patterns a story runs on.
Then you can read a whole fable and see how much you follow.
13 core chapters · 3 optional references · Free, at your own pace
Starting from scratch
Start with the sounds, then read your first real words and work through the patterns a story needs. The cards below let you try a greeting or look at the spelling first.
Start with the sounds →Try saying helloA first hello
A first hello
in Italian.
Start with hello and thank you, then introduce yourself. The pronunciation and English are there to help.
Try the lesson A reading-first approachSee how the spelling sounds.
Italian is written the way it is said. Learn the five vowels and the two letters that change sound, and you can say a word you have never seen.
See how the letters workChapter 1 of 16 · Explore the Italian path
Start here · Chapter 1 of 16
How this path works
See how the Italian, the respelling and the English fit together, and try a checkpoint. The same approach carries through every chapter, and you can stop after any exercise.
≈ 1 min of reading · Practise at your own pace
What’s in this chapter
- This path starts from no Italian and ends with a short fable whose pronunciation and English begin hidden.
- You will attempt a word before revealing how it sounds or what it means.
- In a respelling like KAH-zah, the CAPITAL piece is the one you lean on.
- Three sections are marked as lookups. They are there to be searched, not memorised — stop after any checkpoint.
This is short preparation for reading a book, not a grammar course: how Italian spelling turns into sound, where the pieces of a sentence sit, and enough recurring words to get through a first page with help.
The house is small.
La casa è piccola.
lah KAH-zah eh PEEK-koh-lah
The large line is the spelling. The middle line is the respelling: the hyphens cut the word into pieces and the CAPITAL piece is the one you lean on. At checkpoints, the respelling and the English stay hidden until you reveal them. Respellings are approximations — when audio is available, audio wins.
Four animals walk the whole path — Mina the mouse, Tobi the rabbit, Tika the bird, Dara the fox — from the fable collection it ends by handing you. And here is the promise: by the last reading you will read this in Italian, with the English hidden — “One day the fox saw a big bird in the tree. ‘Good morning,’ said the fox. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘I am going to the wood,’ answered the bird, ‘because I am hungry.’”
How to use a checkpoint
Look at the Italian first and try it out loud. Then reveal.
- casa
Two pieces. Lean on the first.
Show answer +Hide answer −
casaKAH-zah “house”. Say “KAH-zah”.
The chapters
What do you want to work on?
If you’re starting from scratch, follow the chapters in order. Otherwise, pick the bit you need. You can skip the reference pages and come back to them.
First sentences: greeting people and saying who you are
Say hello, say thank you, and introduce yourself. Then learn the six shapes of am, are and is, so you can tell who a sentence is about.
Describing words, and where they sit
A describing word is a word like big, small, old or good. In Italian it usually comes after the thing it describes and copies its ending, which tells you what belongs to what.
Have, want, go, and the short words with “the” inside
Have, want, can, must, go and come, each one word with the doer already inside it. Then the short words that weld a place-word onto “the”, like al and nel, and how to split them.
First reading with help: a bird loses its tree
Read a whole short story about Tika the bird and Dara the fox, with the pronunciation and the English beside every line. Every word in it has appeared earlier on this path.
Come back to these chapters whenever you need them.All Italian chapters ↗