Ciao! Do you speak Italian… Parli italiano…
Like this… così?
It's normal to translate in your head when you’re learning, but it can slow you down when you’re trying to understand and speak to Italians. The good news is, you probably already think in Italian a bit! When you say 'ciao,' you don’t think 'hi' first, right? You just need to do the same with more phrases, including longer ones.
These 5 steps will help you think and speak in Italian so you can communicate more smoothly with the locals.
Psst! If you’d like some extra help with speaking Italian, our Online Italian School is opening soon and we’d love to welcome you.
1. Automate
If you can say “ciao” without translating, it’s because you’ve heard and used it so many times that it’s become automatic.
When you translate other Italian words and phrases into your native language, it simply means you haven’t automated them – yet! This is assolutamente normale, absolutely normal in the beginning.
There are two main strategies that will help you automate your Italian. The first is learning phrases that Italians use all the time, without worrying about the meanings of individual words.
Here are some examples for beginners:
| Va bene | OK | Vah BEH-neh |
| Non c’è problema | No problem | Non chEH proh-BLEH-mah |
| Mi dispiace | Sorry | Mee deesp-YAH-cheh |
| Non lo so | I don’t know | Non loh soh |
| A presto! | See you soon! | Ah PRES-toh |
And if you’re thinking, I already know some of these, then they are great examples of how you’ve already automated some Italian!
The second strategy is repetition. Speaking Italian is a bit like learning how to drive – at first you focus on every detail, but with practice, it becomes second nature. The more you repeat and practice your Italian, the more easily you'll be able to speak.
We’ll show you how in the next tip.
2. Apply
Students often ask us “when will I start thinking in Italian?” as if they’re waiting for it to happen magically. But actually, you can start now!
Try applying the Italian you’ve already learned to your internal monologue as you go about your day. Over time, thinking in Italian will become a habit.
| Street stories | As you walk along the street, try thinking in Italian about the people around you: Where do you think they’re going? What are they doing? |
| Your day | In the morning, think about your day ahead, what do you have planned? During the day, what are you doing right now? At night, what did you do? |
| Your life | Think about your life – your friends, your family, your hobbies, your habits, your job, your mood, your likes, your dislikes… |
Even as a beginner, you can do these activities to automate whatever vocabulary you have, for example:
– Where is that lady going? Maybe she’s going to… il supermercato!
– I’m tired, I’d like a coffee – vorrei un caffè!
For bonus points, try speaking aloud to yourself or your cat, or dog. You can also try chatting with friends who are learning Italian or with ChatGPT (it answers back!).
These low-pressure ways to practice will help you automate your Italian, so when the time comes to speak with real Italians, your sentences will flow more easily.
It’s definitely worth a try! Here’s what two Italian learners had to say about it:
I used the 'thinking' technique, and when the time came to speak, I did it much more fluently, as if I had already practiced the sentences.
Since I started narrating what I'm doing at any given moment, my results have skyrocketed, in my opinion. Highly recommended!
3. Awareness
When you start thinking or speaking aloud in Italian, you’ll probably become aware of something: there are lots of words, phrases and grammar that you don’t know, or have forgotten! In this moment, you have two options:
Option 1: Go down a spiral of self-criticism which ends with “I’m probably too stupid/lazy/old to learn Italian anyway”.
Option 2: Embrace the gap in your knowledge as a free lesson! It’ll show you what you need to learn or review to speak better Italian.
The first option wastes energy and makes learning Italian unpleasant – we don’t want that for you! We encourage you to do the second – don’t judge the gaps in your knowledge, embrace them as useful information.
When combined with the next step, they’ll help you make loads of progress.
4. Acquire
Now it’s time to fill those gaps by acquiring the knowledge you need. If it’s a word you don’t know, we suggest looking it up in a dictionary like wordreference.com .
If it’s something longer, like a phrase or grammar point, you can try asking chat gpt, or an Italian teacher if you have one (ai is becoming more accurate, but still makes mistakes, so working with a human is helpful – more on this soon!)
If you like, you can keep a list of things you look up and review it, but you don’t have to. Even if you find yourself looking up the same things over and over again that’s ok, eventually they will stick.
5. Absorb
You know how songs just pop into your head out of nowhere? Well, the same can happen with Italian words and phrases as long as you hear them often enough!
We recommend immersing yourself in Italian, just like children do when they learn their first language. The more you listen to Italian, the more you'll naturally absorb common words and phrases—allowing you to use them without needing to translate first.
This is one of the most important strategies for learning Italian, but it can be difficult to know where to begin unless you're already advanced and comfortable with Italian radio, movies, and TV shows.
A great place to start is with dialogues adapted for learners, which you can find in many episodes of our Joy of Languages podcast or in beginner courses.
Bonus Tip: Join our Online Italian School!
To speak and understand Italian, consistent practice is really important—especially with the right materials at your level. In our courses, we’ll help you achieve this through lessons that include:
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Daily stories and natural conversations to absorb real-life Italian.
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Notes to make you aware of gaps in your knowledge, with clear explanations to help you acquire useful words, phrases and grammar.
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Speaking practice with patient teachers who’ll help you apply what you learn and automate your Italian.
If you think you might like to join us, click here to learn more about our Online Italian School . We’d love to see you there!
K: Ciao a tutti e benvenuti! Hi everyone and welcome to “Learn Italian with Joy of Languages”. Before we get started, we have a quick announcement: registration for our Online Italian School is opening in a couple of days.
M: Last term we sold out molto velocemente, very fast, so if you think you might like to join us and you’d like a reminder so you don’t miss it, click the link in the description – we’d love to see you there!
K: So let’s talk about how to understand and speak in Italian without translating in your head first. A lot of students ask us “when will I start thinking in Italian”, or they ask me “when did you start thinking in Italian”, as if it’s something that magically happens one day when you’re good enough at Italian. It might be like that for some people, but it wasn’t for me! I actually just decided one day to start trying to think in Italian, to use that little voice that narrates in my head, and try to say stuff in Italian. At first it was really slow and unnatural but over time it started to become a habit. And I think it really helped me with speaking.
M: You can actually do it from beginner level – in fact, you might already speak a little Italian without translating in your head. For example, when you say ”ciao”, you probably don’t stop and think “hi” first, right?
K: And that leads us to the first of our five tips on how to think and speak in Italian: Automate . If you can say “ciao” without translating, you’ve probably heard and used it so many times that it’s become automatic.
M: When there are Italian words and phrases that you translate in your head first, it just means that you haven’t fully automated them. This is assolutamente normale, absolutely normal in the beginning.
K: There are two main strategies that will help you automate your Italian. The first is learning common “chunks” of phrases, rather than individual words. Now we’ll hear some examples for beginners. If you hear any that already feel easy for you, it’s a great example of how you’ve already automated some Italian!
M: Our first is: va bene (x2)
K: This means “ok”.
M: Va bene. Our next example is: non c’è problema (x2).
K: This means “no problem”. Remember, don’t worry about the individual words, just learn the chunk.
M: Non c’è problema. Next is mi dispiace (x2)
K: This means I’m sorry.
M: Mi dispiace. Next, we have non lo so (x2)
K: That means “I don’t know”
M: Non lo so. Finally, we have a presto! (x2)
K: This means “see you soon”
M: A presto
K: But perhaps the most important part of automating your Italian is repetition.
M: Speaking Italian is a bit like learning how to drive – at first you focus on every detail, but with practice, it becomes second nature. The more you repeat and practice your Italian, the more easily you'll speak.
K: Our second tip, apply, will help you do that. To get lots of practice thinking in Italian, try to apply the Italian you know in your mind as you go about your day. For example, if you’re walking around the street, look at the people around you, where do you think they’re going? What do you think they’re doing? What do they look like? What kind of job do you think they have?
M: Just use what you have, so if you only have a few words, you can look at someone and think il supermercato! As in, that’s where you think they’re going.
K: You can also think about your day, for example, in the shower you can think about your plans for the day, as you go about your day you can think about what you’re doing in that moment, and at the end what you did. You can also do the same thing for your friends and family.
M: Again here, they could be really simple sentences, like “I’d like a coffee”, vorrei un caffè (x2).
K: For bonus points, try speaking aloud to yourself or your cat, or dog. You can also try chatting with friends learning Italian or with ChatGPT – it answers back!
M: These low-pressure ways to practice will help you automate your Italian, so that when you speak with Italians, your sentences will flow more easily.
K: The third tip is awareness . When you start thinking or speaking aloud in Italian, you’ll probably become aware of lots of words, phrases and grammar that you don’t know, or have forgotten. In this key moment, you have two choices:
-
Option 1: You can go down a spiral of self-criticism which ends with “I’m probably too stupid/lazy/old to learn Italian anyway”.
-
Option 2: Embrace the gap in your knowledge as a free lesson! It’ll show you what you need to learn or review to speak better Italian.
M: The first option is a waste of energy and makes learning Italian unpleasant. We suggest you do the second – don’t judge the gaps in your knowledge, welcome them!
K: And when you combine them with the fourth tip, acquire, they’ll help you make lots of progress. Once you’ve identified the gaps in your knowledge, it’s time to fill them, to acquire the things you were missing.
M: If it’s a word you don’t know, we suggest looking it up in an online dictionary like wordreference.com . You can listen to the pronunciation by clicking on the little speaker symbol. If it’s something longer, like a phrase or grammar point, you can try asking chat gpt, or an Italian teacher if you have one.
K: Ai is improving quickly, but it still makes mistakes, and when you speak to it in Italian it’s not very good at speaking slowly, correcting your mistakes, or giving clear feedback, so working with humans is helpful – more on this soon!
M: Our last tip is to absorb as much Italian as you can. You know how songs just pop into your head out of nowhere? Well, the same can happen with Italian words and phrases, if you hear them often enough!
K: We recommend immersing yourself in Italian, just like children do when they learn their first language. The more you listen to Italian, the more you'll naturally absorb common words and phrases, which allows you to use them without needing to translate first.
M: This is one of the best strategies for learning Italian, but it can be difficult to know where to begin unless you're already advanced and comfortable with Italian radio, movies and TV shows.
K: A great place to start is with dialogues adapted for learners, which you can find in a lot of the episodes of this podcast or in beginner and intermediate Italian courses with dialogues.
M: You can definitely do what we've shared today on your own – for us the most important thing is that you’re learning Italian! But we know it can be difficult to find things that you enjoy listening to at your level and to correct your mistakes by yourself. These are things that we can help you do in our Online Italian School.
K: To speak and understand Italian, consistent practice is really important, so as a member you’ll get daily lessons with stories and natural conversations between us and the teachers, to help you absorb the kind of Italian that will help you communicate in everyday situations in Italy.
M: We have them at every level, even if you’re starting from “ciao”. And the lessons include notes that make you aware of gaps in your knowledge, with clear explanations to help you acquire useful words, phrases, and grammar. You’ll also have a place to ask questions about anything you’re unsure of.
K: And you’ll get to practice speaking, using the same words and phrases, with very kind, experienced teachers who’ll encourage you to speak Italian. This way you can apply what you learn and automate your Italian, with personalised and encouraging feedback.
M: If you think you might like to join us, click the link in the description to learn more about our Online Italian School. We’d love to help you start understanding and speaking more when you get to chat with Italians.
K: See you soon, or as we say in Italian:
K + M: A presto!
Time to check your understanding and remember everything you just learned! Below you’ll find a mini-quiz and some vocabulary cards to help it all go in.
Quiz: Think and Speak in Italian
How much did you learn? Find out in the quiz!
Click here to take the quiz for this episode: Think and Speak in Italian
Vocabulary
Va bene = Ok
Non c’è problema = No problem
Mi dispiace = I’m sorry
Non lo so = I don’t know
A presto = See you soon
Flashcards: Think and Speak in Italian
Not sure how it works? Click here to watch the tutorial
