Read books in Italian.
Open Calvino, Eco, Ferrante, Dante. Tap any word and see what it means right in the sentence you were reading.
Why read Italian books in the original
Italian is the closest modern Romance language to Latin. The grammar is intricate (subjunctive, conditional, agreement), but the language itself is musical and a pleasure to read aloud.
Italy also has one of the deepest literary traditions in Europe and one of the strongest contemporary scenes. Calvino in the 70s, Eco in the 80s, Ferrante in the 2010s. Each of them sounds completely different in the original than in translation.
For a Spanish or French speaker, Italian reads almost easily. Even without those, vocabulary builds quickly, and the spelling is regular - if you can say it, you can spell it.
What it looks like
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura.
RITROVAI → FOUND MYSELFFirst-person passato remoto of ritrovarsi (“to find oneself”). The simple past tense, mostly literary - the workhorse of Italian narrative writing.
Six Italian books worth your time
Le città invisibili
Marco Polo describes cities to Kublai Khan - cities that don't exist, or shouldn't, or might. Short chapters, beautiful Italian, perfect for reading in pieces.
L'amica geniale
First in the Neapolitan Quartet. Modern Italian, addictive narrative, two girls growing up in a poor neighbourhood of Naples in the 1950s.
Il nome della rosa
Medieval mystery in a monastery, written by a semiotician who couldn't help being clever. Long, but the Italian rewards attention.
Se questo è un uomo
Levi was a chemist who survived Auschwitz. The Italian is plain, deliberately so, and that plainness gives the book its weight.
Il Gattopardo
Sicily during the Risorgimento, told by a writer who finished his only novel just before dying. The most quoted line in modern Italian literature comes from here.
La Divina Commedia
The foundation of Italian literature. The Italian here is medieval but readable, and it's the reason modern Italian sounds the way it does.
How LinguaRead works with Italian
Drop in any Italian EPUB. Tap a word for the meaning, the gender, the conjugation. Tap again to see why passato prossimo here and not passato remoto, why subjunctive after credere, why this preposition.
Italian has a high density of small grammatical words doing important work - articles, prepositions, pronouns. Reading in context is the only way to develop a feel for which one goes where. The grammar table is there if you want it; the story is what makes it stick.
Pick an Italian book. Start reading.
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