Learning Italian

DuoLingo, an online language app.
Our local library offers the app Mango, which is similar.
Get some language CD's from your library.
There are Italian language learning books which sometimes come with a CD if you're buying them new.
Perhaps your local college or City offers night school classes for beginners?
Try to just learn Please, Thank you, Hello, Goodbye and Help; and you will be well received in Italy.

After studying Italian in a classroom, I wanted practice speaking and used ConversationExchange.com to find native Italian speakers for conversation practice. One of my conversation partners lives in Italy, the other in the US, where time zones are easier to manage. Both are native Italian speakers.

With one of my conversation partners, we speak Italian each week for 45 minutes and English for 45 minutes, helping each other in an informal way, online and often over coffee. We help each other with grammar and vocabulary and "phrases that locals use." But mainly it's practice speaking and listening. Over the years, we've become friends and even met up for a couple of days of sightseeing together during my most recent visit to her home town of Rome.

Thanks! We have a number of learning tools already, I mostly use Pimsleur and my partner likes Duolingo. That Conversation Exchange looks like a real opportunity and might be just what we were looking for

Rosetta Stone is an excellent program. Duolingo is fun and easy to use. You might also look into EdEx which offers 3 online courses in Italian for free.

I am reasonably able to speak rudimentary Italian. I have learned over the years that CDs on the car player are the best and easiest way to familiarize myself with the sounds and vocabulary of the language.

Learning a language is basically repeating words and phrases over and over. Fluency is a goal, but familiarity is a more realistic one, and knowing the basic phrases, numbers, greetings, and "touristy" words will help you to enjoy your linguistic efforts.

Buona fortuna!

I went to Italy for 2 weeks in 2019. I practiced basic conversational Italian using a Spotify podcast called Coffee Break Italian. They have other languages as well. Each lesson is 30 minutes and it involves repeating words and sentences and then building up from there each consecutive lesson. I took notes as I went through the lessons. I know Spanish so it seemed easy for me to grasp. The podcast helped me have some general quick conversations, ask for directions, etc. Make sure you download each episode so you can refer to them even when not on wifi. I have to refer back to it because we’re going again this summer! Good luck!

It’s fun to learn Italian but totally unnecessary unless you are going to tiny villages way out in the country only populated by people over 60.

It’s really two things. One, it’s fun. But also I think of it as a way to be polite and respectful of another culture. I’m hoping people enjoy the effort and maybe it’s a way to open some doors and create some connections. Plus will be spending time in the country after the tour, and we’re well into our 60s.

I've been using Babbel. Actually, I dabble in Babbel. Originally, I started it before our trip in 2019, I was amazed at how much I actually could understand. Having some background in Spanish was a good help. I've started from the beginning for our next trip but, unfortunately, I have less free time than before. They also have conversation sessions but I haven't sprung for that. Realistically, I'm more of a visual person. While I can put together a few sentences and probably understand more than I can speak, the ability to decipher the written word has proven very useful.

I found that it was fun to meet with Italians at our local Italian Heritage Club. The membership is mostly older (I'm talking like 70 -80's) but they are delightful and so happy to share their language and culture with an American.

When I was in Italy last September and struggling with my rudimentary Italian, (I've used Pimsleur ) a very handsome man turned to me and said "we are grateful."
In a nutshell, that's the best reason to learn any foreign language before you visit their country.

A second thought: listen to News in Slow Italian. It's really fun, and you don't have to do anything except just listen. Easy peasy.

I think it’s always polite & considerate to be able to say some basic sentences and greetings in the native language, so I always study ahead of time. I have used Duolingo, an old CD that had games on it that really helped to learn numbers, colors, time and tourist words. And, I also search on YouTube for the language & beginning or tourist words and listen to those several times. Those have helped a lot, too.

I’ve been to Italy several times and found it very helpful to be able to speak, especially outside the touristy restaurants that you want to avoid, anyway, for a better experience. It even helped a lot when I was in a busy shop in Venice the first time and wanted to purchase a beautiful black embroidered table runner that was in their window filled with items.

Before my trip in 2019, I used Pimsleur (free from my library) and that was enough for me to know a few polite phrases and, while I would have been fine without them, I think people appreciated the effort. Since then I've taken some classes at my local university and used an app called LingoDeer that I think is quite helpful. I went back this fall and was able to hold some very, very basic conversations in Italian. I feel like this opened up some doors for us, quite literally in the case of the woman who closed up her jewelry store in Venice to walk us to her family's workshop so we could meet her son and learn how they make their jewelry! The classes and app were helpful for learning vocabulary, but any sort of "listen and repeat" system like Pimsleur is the best preparation for travel, in my opinion, because you might use the wrong word or verb tense in a sentence, but at least you'll pronounce it correctly and that makes it easier to be understood.

All of the places mentioned are good. I have found the best (for me) is the website italki.com.
You can choose your live instructor from a lengthy list of introductory videos. You can also pick the level you need, and the length of each lesson. The lessons are inexpensive.
I have been to Italy twice for language school, and italki is the closest to "being there" that I have found.
Best of luck, and have fun!

I would like to present a very different approach. When I was a kid studying classical music at the conservatory, I listened and studied several classics of German opera, like Die Zauberflöte, Freischutz, Salome, Tristan und Isolde. When at 21 I was sent for a one-month long master in orchestra playing in Germany, I discovered having already some vocabulary from the opera study, I just needed to live in the language a bit; I came back to Italy speaking and understanding some German. This made easier studying music and the German got gradually better. - 30+ years from that time, having spent a lot of holiday time in Austria, I came to having an understanding of German and even reading books, if slowly, without a single minute of formal language training. Do not underestimate the power of music; if you manage to listen music in a foreign language for several months, for example while you are driving, you will discover you get some of the language even without an explicit effort. Of course, you need some grammar if you have to put everything together. But that it is not a priority.