While you can certainly learn the Italian language faster than 3 months, you will get better results by taking your time and making sure that you are putting in the effort. The best way to learn Italian in 3 months is to find a program that is designed to teach you Italian and speak like a native speaker.
They categorise Italian as a 'Group One' or 'Category One' language meaning a student would spend nearly 600 hours in the classroom to reach basic fluency. The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) considers Italian to be one of the easiest languages to learn.
If you have an intermediate level, it'll probably take you around 6 months to a year to become fluent in Italian. If you already have an advanced level, it'll probably take you around 6 months.
Pretend you are learning Italian as a full-time job — actively studying for 8 hours a day. You would reach the necessary 480 hours of study at this pace in 60 days, approximately 2 months. For a group 2–4 language, you would be looking at around 3 months to reach basic fluency.
Though I would have thought it to be mission impossible, I was surprised at how much Italian I was able to learn to use effectively in just two months. What you need are clear ideas about what and how you want to learn and to free yourself from old study habits and forget old fashioned methods of studying a language.
In short, 80% of the results you get come from 20% of your efforts. To maximize your productivity, you need to focus on the 20% that's going to get you the greatest results. Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto invented this theory in Italy while looking at his garden's pea pods.
The US Foreign Service Institute considers Italian a 'tier one' language, which means that it's one of the easiest languages for a native English speaker to learn. Their research suggests that it'll take roughly 480 hours of practice to reach fluency.
Duolingo recommends that beginners spend at least 30 minutes per day on the app. If you do this, you can start to see results in about a month.
You learn new words and phrases with lots of visual revision reminders. However, language learning isn't exactly like playing a game. So although Duolingo can be very fun, it won't give you all the tools you need to learn Italian. Duolingo won't teach how to communicate in Italian or how to understand a native speaker.
Italian here. Since our language is syllable-timed and not stress-timed, of course we seem to speak at a slightly faster pace than languages which basically pronounce one syllable per word and blur the rest, like English does, to convey the same amount of information.
To sum up, while Italian is easier in terms of pronunciation, Spanish is simpler in terms of grammar. It seems this Italian vs Spanish thing is not as easy as we thought it would be. If you speak English, Spanish will be definitively easier than Italian for you because there are more similarities.
A1 Beginner or Elementary
Can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type. Can introduce him/herself and others and can ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, people he/she knows and things he/she has.
You want to reach B1 level Italian language if you want to be able to have more advanced conversations with native Italian speakers without much effort. If you want to reach level B1 and obtain the B1 level language certification, 240–300 hours of lessons are suggested.
Can you be too old to learn Italian? No, age is not a barrier to learning a new language like Italian. While younger individuals may have an easier time picking up new languages, older learners can still benefit from language learning and can make progress with consistent effort and practice.
People are often charmed by the musicality of Italian, as well as the promise of la dolce vita. The language ranks fourth among the world's most learned languages, after English, French and Spanish. Most importantly, Italian is associated with a rich culture whose influence extends to all four corners of the globe.
By itself, Duolingo's Italian course could probably get you to an A2 level in reading and listening (so long as you're doing enough passive learning as well). A good tool to use — either alongside Duolingo or after you've completed the course — is ItalianPod101.
Duolingo gives you a placement test at the beginning of any new course so that you don't have to waste time with things you already know. I immediately “tested out” of 70% of the lessons and was able to take the final test for the Duolingo Award as they call it and completed it.
French. French is more difficult for Italian speakers to understand and learn than Spanish. That being said, French is also a Romance language and has several similarities with Italian, including the way verbs are conjugated and the variation of nouns according to gender and number.
As mentioned before, the pronunciation is pretty easy, but Italian has a certain melody which makes the language more difficult. In order to sound like an Italian, you not only need to make sure to pronounce the words correctly, you also need to speak with a certain melody.
As for purely domestic Italian vocabulary, you will need about 3,000 words to communicate with native Italian speakers. This will enable you to hold a conversation on general topics, and once you are able to speak about simple things, you can increase your level of knowledge to 5,000-6,000.
The most difficult aspect is subjective and varies for each individual. However, some potential difficult aspects are: verbs, feminine and masculine nouns, pronunciation of double consonants, and the use of auxiliaries essere and avere.
The rule concerning the congiuntivo (subjunctive) gets the prize as the most difficult grammar rule in Italian. We use the congiuntivo to talk about hopes, hypotheses, desires, fears, possibilities, and doubts. The congiuntivo is usually preceded by the word che.
The easiest languages are our old buddies, the Romance languages: Spanish, French, and Italian, among others. Most of these languages are in the same language family as English. And, according to the FSI, the hardest are Arabic, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin.