Italian has 6 articles, built around the 500 phrases for a first month and the page on the mistakes English speakers make. The statistics page counts the Italian half of the corpus, level by level and theme by theme; the rest are frequency and themed lists.
The 500 is the one to read if you are moving. The verb list is the one a student should not skip, because Italian puts more of the sentence on the verb than English does. One list here is written around a job: the Italian a foreign-trained doctor needs in the first weeks on a ward. It is a language list and never clinical guidance. Italian is thin here next to Spanish. There is nothing yet on the restaurant, the shop or a first week in an office, and those come before any more frequency pages.
Where to start
- The 500 Italian phrases you actually needthe list for a first month, in the order a day happens.
- Italian mistakes English speakers makethe words that look like English and mean something else.
- Most common Italian verbs: A1 to C2 frequency ladderItalian puts more of the sentence on the verb than English does.
- Italian vocabulary, by the numberswhat the pair actually holds, level by level and theme by theme.
Start here
The pages we made for Italian itself: the phrase list, the traps, and the numbers behind the pair.
The 500 Italian phrases you actually need
The 500 Italian phrases for surviving, travelling and working, grouped by the situations of a day, with the trap and the Lei or tu choice beside each.
The Vocabcord 200 for DoctorsItalian for doctors: 200 hospital phrases
200 Italian phrases for a hospital shift: the handover, the ward round, the history, the examination, the family, the discharge letter.
The Vocabcord 500 · ItalianItalian for your first 48 hours in Italy
The Italian for the passport queue, the taxi meter, a SIM that wants a codice fiscale, the bar counter you pay at first, the scontrino and the etti.
The Vocabcord 500 · ItalianItalian mistakes English speakers make
The Italian traps our note column kept flagging: ciao to the wrong person, grazie after in bocca al lupo, ricetta meaning two things.
Corpus statisticsItalian vocabulary, by the numbers
Every Italian entry the app ships, counted by CEFR level and by theme, computed from the pack manifests themselves.
Words and frequency
Which words to spend your time on, ranked from our own corpus.
Reference
The closed systems: the calendar, the clock, the numbers, the word classes. Pages you look something up in.
The rest of the site
The six phrase lists share one page: The Vocabcord 500 says what they are, how they were written and how to cite them. The corpus statistics count all six pairs at once, and the methodology page explains how a phrase gets a level and a theme. Teachers can run a list as a scheme of work from the teachers page. Everything else we publish is on the blog.
If a translation, a level or a note on any of these pages is wrong, tell us on the support page. Corrections from people who live in the language are the only way this stays honest.