With over 60 million speakers, Italian is the fifth most spoken language in the world. And lucky for us language learners, it’s also one of the easiest languages to learn. If you’re looking to start learning Italian, or improve your skills, here are the best picks for the best books to learn Italian.
1. Living Language Italian, Complete Edition
Price On Amazon: $44.99
Reviews: 4.5/5 (1,800+)
Many reviews mentioned: “easy to use”, “highly recommend”, and “better than Rosetta Stone”
Why You Need It: This book has a little of everything. It has 3 Books with 46 lessons, 9 Audio CDs, and free online learning.
The method that living language uses to teach you Italian is by first building a foundation
so that you can start speaking Italian immediately using essential words and phrases.
Then you will continue to add on each lesson as you advance to full sentences, then actual conversations.
Then, you will retain what you’ve learned with recall exercises to move your new language from short-term to long-term memory.
Lastly, achieve your goals by not just mimicking or memorizing. You will develop practical language skills to speak in any situation.
This book and audio tapes make learning Italian fun and engaging and will take you from beginner to advanced in no time.
2. Easy Italian Phrase Book: 770 Basic Phrases for Everyday Use
Price On Amazon: $3.50
Reviews: 4.4/5 (1,200+)
Many reviews mentioned: “easy to use”, “good basic tool”, and “highly recommend”.
Why You Need It: This book is great if you are planning a trip to Italy and need to quickly learn some key phrases to get you through.
Next to the phrases, there is a phonetic pronunciation guide so that you can make sure that you are saying the phrases correctly. In other words, please never say “gratzi” when in Italy. It is pronounced “Gratzi-ay”.
3. Short Stories in Italian for Beginners
Price On Amazon: $13.25
Reviews: 4.7/5 (1,200+)
Many reviews mentioned: “Stories are interesting”, “great way to learn Italian”, and “highly recommend”.
Why You Need It: Stories are a great way to learn a new language because they give you context for vocabulary words. It also allows you to learn sentence structure so that you can form sentences that make sense.
This book has 8 stories with 1,000 of the most frequently used Italian vocabulary words. This book is for beginners but there is also a book for intermediate Italian learners as well.
Stories are also a great way to learn languages because they really draw you into the story and make learning a language fun.
4. Italian All-in-One For Dummies
Price On Amazon: $23.99
Reviews: 4.5/5 (600+)
Many reviews mentioned: “easy to use”, “I really like it”, and “great way to study the language”.
Why You Need It: This book has 6 books in one so it makes for a very comprehensive language learning experience. It has the Italian For Dummies book, Intermediate Italian For Dummies, Italian Grammar For Dummies, Italian Verbs For Dummies, Italian Phrases For Dummies, and Italian For Dummies Audio Set.
This book is great because it comes with so much that you would normally have to buy a lot of different products to get. It even comes with an audio set so that you can hear from a native speaker what the words sound like.
5. Italian Vocabulary & Italian Grammar Pamphlets
Price On Amazon: $6.95
Reviews: 4.6/5 (1,000+)
Many reviews mentioned: “quick reference”, “a lot of information”, and “easy to use”.
Why You Need It: Vocabulary and grammar go hand in hand when it comes to learning a language. The vocabulary pamphlet has a pronunciation guide, numbers, food, body, questions, and so much more.
The grammar pamphlet includes Numbers, The Italian Alphabet & Pronunciation, Articles, Capitalization in Italian & English, Adverbs, Nouns, Adjectives, Conjunctions, Negatives, Prepositions, Pronouns, Verbs: Simple & Compound Forms, Finite Verbs: Forms & Function, and Verb Constructions: Forms & Function.
Both of these pamphlets together are the perfect study guide for learning Italian and help you memorize the grammar rules as well as vocabulary.
6. ITALIAN in 10 minutes a day: Language course for beginning and advanced study
Price On Amazon: $27.83
Reviews: 4.5/5 (300+)
Many reviews mentioned: “easy to use”, “great way to learn”, and “fun way to learn”.
Why You Need It: This book is great for people who have a busy schedule and can’t spend a lot of time on language learning. This ten-minute-a-day workbook allows you to learn just a little bit day by day.
It also comes with a digital download that allows you to hear the words, practice grammar, and play games. There is so much that this book comes with like: the 132-page illustrated workbook, Full color throughout, 150 Sticky Labels, Ready-made Flash Cards, Cut-out Menu Guide: Practice at your local restaurant and take it on your trip, Pronunciation Guide, Over 300 “Free Words” (Sounding similar to their English counterparts, these Italian words take no extra effort to add to your vocabulary), Glossary of over 2,000 new words, definitions, and pronunciation.
7. Easy Italian Phrase Book: Over 1500 Common Phrases For Everyday Use And Travel
Price On Amazon: $6.95
Reviews: 4.5/5 (400+)
Many reviews mentioned: “highly recommend”, “great book”, and “I like this book”.
Why You Need It: It has an introduction with a detailed guide on how to pronounce vowels and consonants (as well as their combinations) in the Italian tongue. Also, it has a list of over 1,500 common phrases in Italian, with an accurate translation in English for your understanding. A phonetics pronunciation guide of each and every word in the phrases is included after every translation. Finally, a conclusion to make sure you’ve learned and supply you with a final list of tips.
Phrases are a great way to learn a language because it allows you to see sentence structure which you can then replace nouns and verbs in the phrases to make your own phrases.
8. 15-Minute Italian: Learn In Just 12 Weeks
Price On Amazon: $12.99
Reviews: 4.5/5 (300+)
Many reviews mentioned: “very useful”, “great for travel”, and “great book”.
Why You Need It: This book is meant for beginner Italian learners and people who are going to be traveling to Italy. This book also has the same learning model as the 10 minutes a day book. The goal is that by just studying a little bit per day you will not get overwhelmed and be able to just take a little time out of your day to learn the basics of a language.
This book contains a menu guide, an Italian-to-English and English-to-Italian dictionary, and a free downloadable audio app for phones that will enable you to hear words and phrases spoken by native Italian speakers.
9. Conversational Italian Dialogues: Over 100 Italian Conversations and Short Stories
Price On Amazon: $14.95
Reviews: 4.4/5 (200+)
Many reviews mentioned: “great resource”, “great way to learn”, and “great help”.
Why You Need It: This book allows you to see dialog between people so that you will be able to see a conversation happening. The dialog in this book is also interesting so you will want to understand what is happening.
This book has more than 100 conversations first in Italian and then in English so that you will be able to understand what the dialogues are saying. It is a very simple and fun way to learn Italian.
10. Complete Italian Step-by-Step
Price On Amazon: $22.68
Reviews: 4.6/5 (100+)
Many reviews mentioned: “Excellent book”, “very comprehensive”, and “well structured”.
Why You Need It: This workbook is for beginners and advanced Italian learners. This book has two of the bestselling books in one easy-to-use guide. It also has a unique building block approach to mastering essential grammar, verbs, vocabulary, and exercises to help test and measure your progress.
This book is one of the top workbooks for learning Spanish so their Italian version of the same book is just as good!
Conclusion
Do you want to learn Italian? Check out our list of the best books to help you get started. These books are packed with information and will help you improve your language skills quickly.
Learning a new language can be challenging, but these books will make it easier for you. If you’re looking for a comprehensive guide to learning Italian, look no further than these titles. Buon divertimento!
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Dayna Brockbank is a travel and language-learning blogger who has lived around the world but has now settled in Nice, France. She speaks 3 languages at varying levels of fluency: Spanish, Italian, and French, and graduated with a Bachelor’s in Spanish Education. She and her husband focus on making travel part of life by living cheaply and traveling on a budget.