Why Italian Feels Hard Until It Suddenly Doesn’t

Italian seems so straightforward. It’s full of cognates, its grammar appears to be simpler than many other languages, and the pronunciation is musical and intuitive. Yet, somehow, speaking just doesn’t come easily. The problem here is not that Italian is complicated. It’s that the way we’re approaching it is. If you start by learning rules and words, Italian will always remain a series of rules and words in your mind. You will need to constantly remember things, find ways to say them, translate in your head. If you start by listening to Italian and imitating its sound, you’ll find that you’re speaking much sooner. And you’ll notice that your progress is not nearly as slow as it was when you were trying to build Italian from a list of parts.

Italian pronunciation is not just icing on the cake. It is a key component of the language. Italian uses intonation, rhythm, stress, and the flow of sounds to convey meaning. If you don’t get the sound right early, you will struggle to understand and be understood. And if you don’t focus on pronunciation from the outset, you will spend a lot of time going back to relearn words and phrases you thought you already knew. Focusing on Italian pronunciation early allows you to learn grammar more intuitively. You will recognize the patterns sooner. The words will sound right together more quickly. You will have less to learn and memorize because the language will start to feel more automatic. Learning a language is like riding a bike. There are a thousand things to keep in mind if you want to balance, if you want to steer, if you want to stop and start. But if you focus on learning how to do all of those things, you will spend years trying to ride a bike. It’s faster and more effective to just… learn how to balance. And once you do, the rest will follow.

If you try to learn Italian by understanding it first, you will struggle. Italian is a language that rewards action, not patience. The fastest way to memorize something is to try to use it, over and over again, in different contexts. So the sooner you start speaking, the sooner you will memorize all of those tricky irregularities that seem so daunting in the beginning. And when you do finally memorize them, they will not feel like exceptions to the rule. They will feel like another tool in your toolbox.

One of the reasons that learning Italian is so discouraging is that there is always something more to learn. It’s like climbing a mountain that grows every time you think you’re near the top. But learning a language is not like climbing a mountain. It’s like spinning a top. At first, it takes a lot of effort to keep it going. Slowly, though, it builds up speed and balance. And eventually, it’s not even really a question of work anymore. You just need to give it the occasional touch to keep it spinning. If you focus on speaking and listening to Italian, it will start to feel more and more comfortable. You will make fewer and fewer mistakes. You will need to look up fewer and fewer words. You will start to express yourself fluently. You will start to think in Italian.

Italian is not hard. It’s just new. And like anything new, it takes a little time and practice to get used to it. But if you focus on using it, on speaking it and listening to it and engaging with it in the real world, it will start to feel a lot more familiar. A lot more fun. And a lot, lot easier.