How to learn Italian by reading

Italian is one of the most pleasant languages to read aloud. Spelling is regular, almost every word ends in a vowel, and once you know how c, g and sc behave before e and i, you can pronounce nearly anything on the page. English speakers also arrive knowing a surprising amount of Italian, from music, food and Latin: piano, studio, finale, libertà, problema.

Italy also has its own children’s classic. Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, published in 1883, is one of the best-known children’s books in the world: a wooden puppet whose nose grows when he lies. It happens to be a perfect first book, as you’ll see below.

What makes Italian hard to read

• Double consonants. They’re pronounced longer, and they change meaning: nonno is a grandfather, nono means ninth; caro means dear, carro is a cart; sete is thirst, sette is seven.
• Stress you can’t see. Most words are stressed on the next-to-last syllable, but many aren’t, and the written accent appears only when stress falls on the final vowel: città, perché, però. Ancora means “still” or “again”; stressed on the first syllable, it’s an anchor. Same spelling, and the context decides.
• Articles that change shape. Il, lo, la, l’, i, gli, le, which then fuse with prepositions: del, dello, nella, sul, dagli.
• The passato remoto. Many Italian novels narrate in a past tense that everyday speech, especially in the north, uses much less: fece, disse, venne, ebbe, nacque. Its irregular forms are many, and Pinocchio is full of them.
• Pronouns in clusters. Glielo means “it to him”; me ne vado means “I’m leaving”; ce n’è uno means “there’s one of them.” These little words carry a lot of meaning in very few letters.
• The subjunctive. Italian uses the congiuntivo after verbs of thinking and believing, where English and even French and Spanish use an ordinary verb: penso che sia vero, “I think it’s true.” It’s also required after benché, prima che and affinché.
• The formal “you.” Lei, the polite “you,” is the same word as “she” and takes a third-person verb: Lei è italiano? means “Are you Italian?”
• Older literary pronouns. Classic novels and older translations often use egli and ella for “he” and “she,” and esso or essa for “it,” where modern speech says lui and lei. You only need to recognize them, but they surprise many learners.

Italian reading at each level

What the CEFR levels mean for Italian text:

• A2, elementary. Short sentences in the present, the passato prossimo (ha detto, è andato) and the imperfetto for background. Everyday words and simple dialogue.
• B1, intermediate. The passato prossimo and imperfetto working together, the trapassato, the future and conditional, the present subjunctive after common expressions, and pronoun combinations such as glielo and ce ne.
• B2, upper intermediate. The passato remoto as the voice of narration, the imperfect and pluperfect subjunctive, “if” sentences of every kind (se avessi saputo, “if I had known”), and a richer, more literary vocabulary.
• C1, advanced. Close to the original, lightly condensed, with long sentences and literary vocabulary. C2 is the complete novel.

CEFR levels explained describes the scale in more detail.

Pinocchio at A2 and at B2

Two moments from Pinocchio, written for this page at two levels:

A2

Pinocchio è un burattino di legno. Non vuole andare a scuola. Quando dice una bugia, il suo naso diventa più lungo.

Pinocchio is a wooden puppet. He doesn’t want to go to school. When he tells a lie, his nose gets longer.

B2

Il Gatto e la Volpe convinsero Pinocchio che, se avesse sotterrato i suoi zecchini nel Campo dei miracoli, la mattina dopo vi avrebbe trovato un albero carico di monete d’oro.

The Cat and the Fox convinced Pinocchio that if he buried his gold coins in the Field of Miracles, the next morning he would find a tree there laden with gold coins.

The A2 text is in the present, three short sentences with everyday verbs. The B2 text uses the passato remoto (convinsero), a pluperfect subjunctive inside the “if” clause (se avesse sotterrato) and a past conditional for the promised result (avrebbe trovato), which is how Italian expresses a future seen from the past. Vi means “there,” a more literary cousin of ci.

A daily Italian reading routine

1. Listen and read together. Play a section with the text highlighted. Italian’s stress and its double consonants are invisible or easy to miss on the page and obvious in the ear.
2. Read a paragraph aloud. Italian rewards it. Then play the same paragraph and compare where you put the stress.
3. Tap only what blocks you. If you understand the sentence, keep going even if one word is new. It will come back.
4. Keep a short list of passato remoto forms. Fece from fare, disse from dire, vide from vedere. Once you know the common ones, most novels open up.
5. Reread before you move on. At the start of each session, reread the last few pages. It takes minutes, and the words you looked up yesterday come back while they’re still fresh.

Reading with audio has research behind it. Webb and Chang (2015, “Second language vocabulary learning through extensive reading with audio support”) found that learners who read graded books while listening to them learned a substantial share of the words they hadn’t known, and kept much of that months later. More in our guides to reading while listening and extensive reading.

Classics to start with

• The Adventures of Pinocchio is Italy’s own classic: short episodic chapters, talking animals, and trouble on every page. Start at A2 and come back at C2 for the complete novel.
• Around the World in Eighty Days is brisk and clear, with short chapters and a deadline that keeps you reading. Excellent at A2 and B1.
• The Count of Monte Cristo has an Italian thread: the island of Montecristo lies in the Tuscan Archipelago, and Dantès’s teacher in prison, the Abbé Faria, is Italian. A long, gripping read at B2.
• Tales from Shakespeare, Charles and Mary Lamb’s retellings, includes several plays set in Italy: Romeo and Juliet in Verona, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew in Padua. Each tale is short enough for a single sitting at B1 or B2.
• Treasure Island is a dialogue-rich adventure that suits A2 and B1.

Reading Italian in Lexo

Every word can be played on its own, which settles where the stress falls and whether a consonant is doubled, the two things an Italian page won’t always tell you. The whole book is narrated as well, with different voices for different characters, and the text highlights each word as it’s read.

Touch a word and you get its meaning in that sentence, its base form and its part of speech: convinsero takes you to convincere, nacque to nascere. Tap glielo and you see what it means right there, which is the part a dictionary can’t give you. Phrases and idioms are explained as a whole, the full sentence is translated into English, and anything you want to remember can go into your Words list. When a passage gets dense, sentence-by-sentence mode shows one sentence at a time with its audio and translation.

Pinocchio, like every book in Lexo, can be read at A2, B1, B2, C1 or C2. Ask for an edition that hasn’t been written yet and Lexo writes it: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest as you go, and a dated “First edition” mark for you. Books are downloaded, so they work offline, and there’s no account, no email, no sign-up.

Italian’s relatives are natural next steps: Spanish, French, Portuguese and Romanian.

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