Beginner Italian Course Lesson 1 - The basics of learning Italian the right way.

How much Italian can you learn in 30 days? Turns out it's heaps! So, you want to learn Italian and don't know where to start. There's so much content out there and you don't really know what is good and what is not good. What is going to help you learn and what is going to waste your time. Well, all of that is about to change. We are officially starting a 30-day Italian for beginners series right here on this channel right now. Cominciamo! Ciao a tutti, I'm Manu Venditti and this is Italy Made Easy. You heard me right. This is the end of your frustrations. The endless search for a method to learn Italian that actually works for you. A way for you to understand how the Italian language works and start using it naturally without having to memorize endless lists of expressions and things like that. Of course, 30 days won't make you fluent. Beware of anybody who promises that. But if you trust me, for the next 30 days slash 30 lessons, I guarantee you will be in the best position you've ever been to continue learning and eventually master my beautiful language, Italian. This is the first time we are doing something like this. Publishing a sequence of in-depth lessons for beginners. Of course, we have our structured courses on our website italymadeeasy.com and my hope is that you too, one day, will join the thousands of students who've learned to communicate in Italian with us. But for now, I really, really, really want to see you get results quickly. We want to get you started on the right foot so you never waste a dollar or a minute doing the wrong thing. I know you want to speak Italian and I'm here to make it possible. You probably tried learning Italian before but maybe didn't get too far. Maybe you learned a bunch of words, phrases, but you never got to the point where you felt confident in making up your own sentences and expressing your own thoughts and personality like an adult. We at Italy Made Easy specialize in that. So if you allow me, I would like to be your teacher and guide for the next 30 days. So how is it going to work? Every day, we'll release a new lesson and you will watch it and do some practice afterwards. It won't take you too long, don't worry. But I also want to be clear about one thing. Just like anything in life, if you want to get good at Italian, you do need to invest some time in it. You gotta work it, right? Before you dive into the first lesson, which is the next video, I need you to promise me something though. The method we use at Italy Made Easy to get English speakers to Italian fluency is very, very different from anything you will find out there. Some might say that it's controversial, but amico mio, my friend, it works. I am asking you to trust me for the next 30 days. I want to be your Italian coach and help you learn how to learn Italian. Do I get your commitment? If so, type sì, Manu, in the comments below. This is your promise to yourself that you will learn as much Italian as possible in the next 30 days. So here are the rules of the game, the guidelines to get you as far as we possibly can with this series alone. We have thousands of students on our academy who learned to communicate in Italian and are now connecting with Italians, you know, freely. Still making mistakes, of course, but they have the confidence to communicate and use the language and I want that for you too. And what have they done? They have followed our advice. So listen up. The Italy Made Easy method is built around three simple principles. Number one, conquer Italian pronunciation as quickly as possible. Two, learn Italian grammar in your native language, not in Italian. And three, listen to a lot of Italian. So let's break it all down in this introductory video so that you're ready to really hit the road running in the next lesson when we get started. So the first point was Italian pronunciation. Now, the Italian language sounds as good as it does to our ears, mainly for one reason. There's a huge amount of vowels in every word. The Italian word for vowel is vocale. And, you know, to vocalize means to sing. The beauty of Italian pronunciation is that you can get good at it pretty, pretty fast if you pay close attention to the vowels. So we have A, E, I, O, U. And consistently in any combination, we pronounce them like that. Again, A, E, I, O, U. So while in English you have the word banana with three different sounds for the vowel A, banana, we Italians say banana with the same sound three times because it's consistent. So banana, it's easier, right? It's the same sound. You see, Italian is a phonetic language, which basically means that it's pronounced the same way it's written and vice versa. This makes it relatively easy for you to pick it up. Overall, the Italian language has fewer sounds than English, and most Italian sounds exist in English. So you basically need to learn for the most part to narrow down your sounds, reduce the number of sounds you make while speaking Italian. In English, for example, depending on which version of English you speak, the same five vowels A, E, I, O, and U can have up to 21 sounds. Did you know that? It's crazy, I know. I had to learn English and I'm still terrible at it. In Italian, just seven sounds. You've already heard five. Now, while I won't be covering too much of the Italian pronunciation in this series, the little info that I will share will get you very, very far. For now, let's just do a quick exercise. Yeah, I know it's just an introduction, but it's time to get to work. Repeat these five sounds after me. A, E, I, O, U. Again, A, E, I, O, U. Now let's pick a consonant from the Italian language and pair it up with the five vowels. For example, let's take B. You know, Italian has the B sound like you have in English. We end up with B, B, B, B, B, B. Already sounds a little bit crazy Italian, but kind of, right? That's the beauty of the language, isn't it? Now let's try with N. The N sound. It's nasal just like it is in English. Identical. So we have N and A, na, N and E, ne, N and I, ni, N and O, no, N and U, nu. So again, without the English sounding vowels, which are so confusing, na, ne, ni, no, nu. Remember, Italian is consistent. So every time you see an A, you can say a. So it doesn't matter what consonant you put before or after, it's going to be na, pa, ma, la, ca, da, all of those. So let's try the P sound. So you go. You tell me the five options for P. Okay, perfetto. And now let's do one more. L, the L sound. You are already getting better at pronouncing Italian, believe it or not. So if you keep those vowel sounds clear and open, a, e, i, all the time, you are pretty much sorted, with some exceptions, obviously. So you said pa, pe, pi, po, pu. Let's pronounce this one. P, A. What is it? And then you said na, ne, ni, no, nu. So let's pronounce ni. And then finally, let's pronounce no. Sandwich. That's how easy it is to pronounce Italian, isn't it? So let's do another one. We have the sound ba, le, na, balena, whale. The main thing is that you really want to get decent at pronouncing Italian from the beginning, so you do not pick up bad habits, and Italians will always understand you, even when your grammar is all wrong and you don't have all the words. As long as you're sounding good, they'll understand you. Principle number two, the controversial one. Learn Italian grammar in your native language, which we assume to be English if you're following this channel, but it could be any other language. It's crazy that this is even controversial, because it's the only way that actually makes sense if you want to learn fast. Over the years, there has been an increasing trend to throw the word immersion left and right, and while true immersion is essential in learning a language, more on this in a minute, what big corporations have done is use the principle of immersion to allow themselves to get lazy and produce cookie-cutter language programs that they can sell to anyone in the regardless of their native language. They want to convince us that since newborn babies learn their mother tongue with immersion, that must surely be the best way for us to do it too. It's not, and it's a huge waste of time. Let's stop it. You see, a newborn baby has no knowledge of anything. No language, no social skills. Everything is new to a baby. So, yes, of course, the only way to learn anything for a child is to hear it in the language they are learning, which is the mother tongue. This process is actually pretty slow when you think about it. It will take some 10 years before that child can express him or herself in an eloquent, accurate, mature way. That's because a child needs to learn not only the language, but also the concept. What is that thing? What is it for? How do I use it? Who can use it? What's the word for it? Now, do you have 10 years before you are fluent in Italian? Yeah, maybe. But do you want it to take 10 years? Hopefully not. So here is the principle that we absolutely want you to abide by. Learn Italian grammar and anything to do with the theory of language learning in English, not in Italian. This is how I'm going to teach you Italian here in this series in English. Imagine you want to learn how to play the violin. You hire a teacher. They come over to your place and all they do is play something for you and expect you to repeat it. You're not sure how to place your fingers? Look at me. You don't understand which note is which? Keep listening. You want to be able to read off music sheets but don't know how? Well, your teacher is only going to use music to teach you music. So good luck. This is what learning Italian in Italian is like. A very slow process filled with doubts and frustrations. Can you pick up something just by imitation? For sure. But how would you like it if your violin tutor used a common language to help you understand how to play the instrument? A language that you already know and are fluent in. Yes, your native language. Fast, effective, and more encouraging because it gets you results quicker and you are less likely to give up. But Manu, aren't I supposed to hear Italian if I want to learn Italian? Oh, yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. Si, signore. Si, signora. That's our third and vital principle for the Italy Made Easy method to work for you too. Immersion. Useful immersion. We don't want you to waste time listening to explanations in Italian about how the Italian language works because you would be struggling to understand the Italian language in the first place and then you would miss out on most of the explanation. And if you really wanted it to work, the explanation would have to be kept to a minimum without giving you enough details for you to actually assimilate it and make it yours so you don't have to think about the Italian rules, you know, Italian language rules when you're using it. But we just covered that, so we're good, right? But what we want is we absolutely want you to spend as much time as possible hearing and that's the word I wanted to use, hearing Italian. One of the reasons most people fail at learning a new language is that besides their one or two hours a week they spend with their language tutor or in the classroom, they do not expose their brain to the foreign language. So that foreign language remains a pretty relevant thing for your brain. Foreign, exactly. What you want to do is make Italian very, very relevant to your brain. You want to trick your brain into caring about getting good at this new thing, otherwise it will just come in from one ear and out of the other. So how do you make Italian relevant? You dive into it every day for as long as you possibly can. How long, Manu? Longer than you think, ideally. Let me reassure you, though. At Italy Made Easy, we distinguish between two types of Italian immersion. Active immersion and passive immersion. As a beginner, you will be spending most of your time in the passive immersion. So what is passive immersion? It's simply you watching or listening to Italian content without trying to understand it. It's just there in the background while you're cleaning, driving, cooking, walking. The key here is that you truly do not care about understanding. Because in most cases, you will not understand. And the more you try to understand, the more frustrated and disappointed you'll get. What you want to do instead is enjoy the melody, the pitch, the speed. Rejoice when you do hear something that you recognize. It's an exercise in relaxation, in a way. Your brain gets to hear a lot of Italian. And as you keep learning more and more things, then you do understand more and more every day. But again, you're not trying to. So the next question I get is usually, what kind of content should I be listening to for passive immersion and for how long? Well, you want to find content in Italian created for Italians that you can ideally watch over and over again. Maybe there's a movie you like. Maybe an Italian vlogger who talks about a topic you care about. Maybe a podcast, a talk show. Anything really, as long as it's not comedy. Because comedy is filled with Italian dialects and that would just throw you off. The safest thing I've been recommending to my students for years now is the QVC Italia YouTube channel. Yes, infomercials. Not great content from a cultural point of view, but you're guaranteed to find hosts and guests who speak clean, clear Italian. And there's the added bonus that in most cases, they're talking about the product that they're selling, which means that it will be even easier for you, for your brain to eventually pick up more things that they're describing the object. And now to the second part of the question, how much passive immersion should you do? The true answer is as much as you possibly can. Ideally, you want to hear Italian for four to eight hours a day. What? Manu, I don't have four hours a day. Remember, this is passive listening. You are getting ready for work. You're making breakfast. You're commuting. You're walking the dog. You're cleaning the house. You're tidying up the garage. Look, do the best you can. That's all I'm asking. All I know is that the more your brain hears Italian, the quicker everything you learn with me in this series is going to sink in and transform into your ability to express yourself in Italian. Now, I mentioned there are two types of immersion. Let's now talk about active immersion. What is it? Active immersion is where you intentionally listen to content in Italian and actively try to understand it. Maybe you analyze it. You read the transcript. You look up words. You translate it. You repeat as you listen and stuff like that. So basically, it's part of your study session. That could be 20 minutes today. Half an hour tomorrow. Nothing the next day because you're busy. Then a full hour on Sunday. Whatever. Just as long as you do some of it some of the time. For active immersion is where the selection of the material is extremely important. You don't want anything that will scare you or discourage you. Of course, any content will be super challenging, especially as a beginner. But you want to avoid stuff that would basically make you lose hope. You know, this is stuff like the news, talk shows, movies. Let's be honest. Any content in Italian created for Italians is not really the best for you right now. Not for active immersion anyway. It's just too fast, too idiomatic. It's probably filled with dialects. It's spoken with unclear regional accents. It's just not the right content for you to do much or any work on. What you want instead is content created with the learner of Italian in mind. We at Easily Made Easy specialize in that. And we've created and keep creating a ton of this type of content. Spoken in a clear way with good quality sound, no background noise, no dialects, no overlapping of speakers. And most of all, we give you access to either a transcript that you can download or in the case of YouTube videos, we give you accurate word per word Italian subtitles. So all of our videos in Italian here have accurate subtitles. Any podcast that we've published has an accurate transcript in a free PDF that you can download. So here's my homework for you to carry out throughout the next 30 days while you watch all the lessons in this series and try to do as much passive immersion as possible. Go to italymadeeasy.com podcast and start listening to our podcast 100% in slower Italian. You can and should start today. It's okay if you don't know any Italian yet. Download the PDF. Just read along while you listen. Just spend some time with it. It's totally okay and even advisable to spend a whole week on the same piece of content. If you want something visual, then I'm going to include here a link to a playlist of our YouTube videos 100% in slower Italian. It's a series called Caffè Italiano con Manu and all the videos have accurate Italian subtitles. To sum things up, tomorrow we start with lesson one. Your job is tune in for all 30 lessons at your own pace. Of course, this is your Italian journey. In the meantime, start practicing your Italian vowels. Fun fact, the Italian alphabet only has 21 letters. Do not try to learn Italian grammar explained to you in Italian and do your immersion. Passive with things like QVC Italia for as many hours as you can every day and active with Italy Made Easy podcast or Caffè Italiano con Manu whenever you have time. For now, this is all. I look forward to being your guide and help you learn Italian. I'm excited for you. Are you excited? Grazie mille e a presto. Un abbraccio, un bacio e a domani.