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Can you understand everything when an Italian speaks fast? If you know the grammar but get lost listening to a movie or a podcast in Italian, you’re not alone. Listening comprehension is one of the hardest skills to develop, but also one of the most important. With this test you’ll discover your true listening level through an authentic story told at natural speed.

Have you ever heard an Italian word and thought: “Wait a moment, hadn’t I already heard this with another meaning?”. There are five little words in Italian — small and apparently innocent — that foreigners hear everywhere in movies, songs, on the street, at the bar. But that almost nobody manages to use in the right way. They are proprio, ancora, appena, allora and già. The problem? Each one has not one, not two, but many different meanings. And they often get confused with each other. In this guide you’ll see all their meanings with practical examples, and you’ll finally learn to distinguish them once and for all.

Do you know that nice feeling of confidence when you speak Italian… that vanishes the exact moment you have to decide whether to use CI or NE? «Ci penso» or «ne penso»? «Ci parlo» or «ne parlo»? If a small doubt (or a headache) has just hit you, you’re in the right place. Because today I won’t just explain the theory: today I’ll put you to the test with a complete test of 38 questions, divided into three parts plus a final challenge!

Has it ever happened to you to say a sentence in Italian that’s grammatically perfect, but the Italian in front of you made that face that says: “I understand you, but no one talks like that“? In textbooks you learn correct expressions that, in real life, almost no one uses. Let’s discover together the sentences that immediately give you away as a foreigner and what native speakers really say instead.

Has it ever happened to you to read sentences like “Non appena arriviamo, ti chiamo” [As soon as we arrive, I’ll call you] or “Tutto andava bene finché non è arrivato lui” [Everything was going well until he arrived] and wonder why that “non” is there, seemingly out of place? It doesn’t negate anything, it doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence, and yet it’s there. This is the phenomenon of the pleonastic NON, one of the most subtle and fascinating features of Italian. In this guide we look at the six main contexts in which it appears, with concrete examples and the special case of “finché” that you absolutely need to know.

Have you ever walked into a bar in Italy, confidently ordered something… and received something completely different from what you expected? Or heard a word you knew, but here it meant something totally different? Italy is a small country on the map, but linguistically it is an entire continent: from North to South, the same things have surprisingly different names. In this article you will discover 15 words that change completely depending on the region — with their origins, curiosities and some traps to avoid.