Italy is fantastic, everywhere you go there are famous buildings, the food is fantastic and people dress so well. If you go over there you’ll probably want to pick up a bit of the lingo…

So, how to learn Italian?

For any European language the course I always 100% totally most absolutely recommend is Michel Thomas Speak Italian for Beginners. It is that good. As I’ve mentioned in previous reviews his 8 hour system does take some will power to get through, but amazes you as so come out with super mega long phrases in a very short time. He tells you not to try to learn anything, just relax, all the responsibility for learning is with the him, not with the you. Then he shows you how you already know thousands of Italian words, and adds in things like “I think that ..”, “but”, “and” etc. so you can make some impressive long sentences.

The only slight problem with Michel Thomas is the lack of vocab, he very often gets you to make sentences like “I think that I would like to try it but I don’t think I am ready yet”, using “it” instead of words. The easiest way to fix this, I find, is to pick up the Living Language Italian series. I bought the Italian one in Milan a couple of years ago and I used the Japanese one a lot. It’s cheap and cheerful, and although not much use on its own, it’s a nice way to get the basic Italian phrases out of the way. I play it on my iPod on a night as I fall asleep. Again highly recommended.

The other big main course I always recommend is the Pimsleur series. It works just as well for learning Italian, and has lots of really useful content. The only problem I had was that I used the Spanish version a few months before and as it is exactly the same curriculum my head got them a bit confused. Also if you’re looking on a price basis, the Michel Thomas Italian is probably a better deal. They are very different though, so you might want to try both and see which you like best.

In university we used the BBC’s Italianissimo series. That was OK, but had the usual textbook faults of being too “bookish” and not really a wonderful way to learn. If you do decide to do it, get the videos as they are probably the best bit.

This year I also bought the Michel Thomas Speak Italian Advanced Course, which was OK, but at a much slower pace than the regular series. It probably is the easiest way to learn all the advanced grammar though.

There are also lots of other “learn on the plane” style phrase books around, but as someone who learns a lot of languages I’d really recommend the courses above as they are really do seem magical in how quickly they get you speaking, and speaking well!

One of the other great things is that unlike a lot of other places I found that even if your Italian isn’t perfect many people in Italy will answer back in Italian, rather than English, which is great for letting you try and try again till you get it right.

So pick up a few of these, put in the time before you go to listen (on the way to work or before you fall asleep), pluck up the courage to use them in Italy and you’ll have a great time. I always said that Italian was my favourite language as you just can’t help but smile when you speak it!

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