Italian For Beginners 1
Italian For Beginners 1
Italian For Beginners 1
Introduction
Welcome to the Italian course! Italian is a Romance language and is spoken by 75 million people,
mostly in Italy. It's one of the official languages in Switzerland and it is also known and spoken in
Albania and Malta. We want to help you learn this great foreign language and we hope this little
course can help. Of course we also have a big grammar reference and a list of vocabulary available
for you to study. This course in part one is intended for absolute beginners who need a little
assistance with starting to learn some basics. So this is not a complete course, when we've showed
you the most important basics we'll let go you and then you can explore our grammar reference all
by yourself.
Before you continue you must do two things, first of all, make sure you are familiar with all the
basic grammar terms, do you know what a noun is? What a verb is? What an adverb is? The second
thing you should do is to learn how to pronounce things in Italian. We'll ask you to study a number
of words in each lesson and you can practice the grammar and vocabulary with some exercises.
After you've done the exercises you can check whether your answer is correct using the following
solutions. Buon divertimento!
Part One - The Basics
Lesson 1: To Be
21 letters compose the Italian alphabet. It's missing j, k, w, x and y. If you know the IPA, it will help
you a lot since the words are pronounced as they're written. We'll start by teaching you how to
introduce yourself in Italian, take a look at the following Italian sentence and its English translation.
All Italian text will be written in blue and the English translation in green.
Io sono Davide
I am David
Here we see your very first Italian sentence where you introduce yourself as Davide; you should of
course replace the name with your own name. Although the sentence consists of only three words
we are going to carefully examine each word. The first word "Io" is the Italian equivalent of the
English word "I", also referred to as 1st person singular; it's a subject pronoun. The second word
"sono" is a verb; it's a conjugation of the irregular Italian verb "essere", which is one of the Italian
equivalents of "to be". Note that, in Italian, the subject pronoun is optional, and it's usually omitted.
So you could also say: "Sono Davide", because the verb "sono" already indicates that it is "I" who's
saying it. So remember, only use a subject pronoun such as "Io" when you really want to imply that
it's absolutely that person who's doing something.
Now we've seen how to introduce yourself using "sono" but we can also introduce other people,
take a look at the following examples; we've put the subject pronouns between brackets because
they are usually omitted:
(Io) sono Davide. I am Davide.
(Tu) sei Davide. You are Davide.
(Lui) è Davide. He is Davide.
(Lei) è Giovanna. She is Giovanna.
È Davide. It is Davide.
(Noi) siamo Davide e Giovanna. We are Davide and Giovanna.
(Voi) siete Davide e Giovanna. You are Davide and Giovanna.
(Loro) sono Davide e Giovanna. They are Davide and Giovanna.
Those are a lot of new words! But it's all very easy. Now you've seen all subject pronouns in Italian,
which are usually omitted, and you know how to refer to people. And besides that you've also
learned your first Italian verb, an irregular verb: "Essere", in English "To be". In Italian and most
other languages, but not in English, there also exists a certain polite form of "you". In Italian they
say "Lei" instead of "tu" in formal speech, "tu" is only used among friends, people of the same age
and for children. Verbs after "Lei" are conjugated like a 3rd person singular. Take a look at the
following sample sentences, and note that the subject pronoun is usually omitted, but for this
example we haven't omitted it:
Lei è nonna You are grandmother
Lei è Davide You are Davide
And this same construction also applies to the plural form of "you"; instead of "voi" they use "Loro"
that is conjugated as a 3rd person plural.
There is also a small new word that appeared in this lesson, the Italian word "e", which means
"and". Note that there is no translation for the pronoun "it" in the example. Actually there is one, but
is almost never used and you usually omit it. It's also a good exercise to try to pronounce every
Italian sentence you see on this page, and when you're uncertain of how to pronounce a certain
character or group of characters then go to the pronunciation page.
Vocabulary
padre father
madre mother
nonna grandmother
nonno grandfather
Exercises
In these exercises we ask you to write the subject pronoun between brackets so you learn those too.
In the next lessons you can omit the subject pronoun.
Exercise A: Translate to English:
1) (Lui) è Davide.
2) È padre.
3) (Loro) sono Davide e Luigi.
4) (Lei) è madre.
5) (Tu) sei nonna.
6) (Tu) sei nonno.
7) (Noi) siamo George e William.
Exercise B: Translate to Italian:
1) We are James and Jane.
2) You are father. - polite singular form -
3) I am mother.
4) She is grandmother.
5) They are Davide and Luigi.
6) You are George and William.
7) You are grandfather.
Solutions
Solution of Exercise A:
1) He is Davide.
2) It is the father.
3) They are Davide and Luigi.
4) She is mother.
5) You are grandmother.
6) You are grandfather.
7) We are George and William.
Solution of Exercise B:
1) (Noi) siamo James e Jane.
2) (Lei) è padre.
3) (Io) sono madre.
4) (Lei) è nonna.
5) (Loro) sono Davide e Luigi.
6) (Voi) siete George e William.
7) (Tu) sei nonno.