Study Italian in Venice

I haven't - but I will point out that native Venetians speak a distinctive and nearly unintelligible to foresti dialect. If you want pure Italian you need to be sure that that is what you will get.

Enjoy!!

How long are you planning to stay in the area to take a language course and what skill level are you hoping to accomplish by the end of your stay? I only ask because I took an intensive course for over a year with a company called Inlingua while I was living and working in Italy and still felt far from being completely fluent (I understood the vast majority of what was being said, but still struggled at times to respond, I could read Italian fairly well, but had more difficulty writing in Italian).

If you are just taking a short trip and only looking to master the basics of tourist Italian to get around and interact a little bit more with the locals, you'd probably do just as well and spend much less, taking an Italian course at a local community college and supplementing it with an online course/CDs from the local library (like Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone).

Inlingua is still around and has locations all around Italy, but I don't believe they have one in Venice. Again, depending on your goals, it may or may not be a good fit for what you want to achieve. I was not in a classroom setting with other students. It was one-on-one instruction conducted solely in Italian from the get-go (no English allowed).

We have to get this lady an answer. This is the third time she has asked virtually the same question about studying Italian in Venice. The first was in 2010, then again in 2011, and now.

Mary, in the last few years have you had more helpful answers elsewhere? Maybe on TripAdvisor or Fodors?

I haven't but a quick web search finds www.veniceitalianschool.com

It has 107 informly excellent reviews on TripAdvisor.

Nigel, any language school in Italy teaches standard Italian, not the local dialect. And the Italian word you're looking for is forestieri or stranieri for "foreigners."