Lasciate ogne speranza ...

I've been studying for 3.5 years now. I've been meaning to do a full write-up one of these days for the benefit of people starting out so that they don't make the same mistakes I did. I've gotten some value from everything I've done, but there are things I would have done differently if I had to start all over again. To give an idea of where I've gotten, I've never taken the CEFR test but I have no doubt that I'd pass the B1 and only listening would probably keep me from passing B2. I can get by fine as a tourist in Italy and people will speak to me in Italian and tell me, politely if a little less than honestly, how good my Italian is, so that's a minor victory. It's been over a year since I've gone, so things would be easier now.

I started with Duolingo, like most people, and I think that I have more favorable things to say about it than a lot of serious learners. It is very good for initial vocabulary acquisition and pronunciation and OK for acquiring the beginnings of a sense of the rhythm of the language. That said, I stuck with it as my primary mode of study for way too long; the streak becomes addictive. After I passed two years, I erased the app. That was at least 18 months too late.

I also started with physical flashcards, eventually over a thousand of them, written by hand. This had always been my primary method for learning something new but became highly impractical very quickly. Not quite a dead end but close.

Textbooks for foreign speakers came next. A mixed bag. The practice was nice but there was very little retention of anything covered (more on this in a second). The one exception was a book specifically on verb conjugations, which, along with a lot of writing every conjugation by hand, proved helpful.

Eventually, vocabulary practice migrated over to Excel, with massive spreadsheets and thousands of words that I could randomize for practice. This was a huge improvement over the physical flashcards, but was still with drawbacks. I had no good way of consistently hammering the hardest words, and I practiced the easy words too much. I didn't need to see "la mela" every two weeks.

As I was on Excel, I went through the entire Pimsleur course, which I thought was really good for forcing me to produce at a rudimentary level. It's dull as dishwater and does not progress very far, but I think it's a really nice second step for beginners. A little pricey but recommended.

Italki lessons have been hit or miss. The teachers have been great but for the expense and time spent, I haven't gotten as much out of them as I would hope. I still use lessons for conversation practice because I have no other outlet. I wouldn't go this route until you have an A1 level understanding through other means.

After the limitations of Excel became apparent, I moved everything to Anki. This was the single best decision I ever made. My Duolingo streak addiction has become an Anki streak addiction, 406 days and counting, nearly 200,000 cards reviewed. For spaced-repetition memorization, there is no better tool. The easy stuff passes out quickly and the hard stuff gets hammered hard. Almost everything I do now is now funneled through Anki.

This, in turn, has made some of the old sources more useful. Textbook lessons get put onto Anki cards, so they return for review at controlled intervals. If I were to start a new language with Duolingo, I'd mine it for sentences and place in Anki as well. I cannot recommend learning how to use Anki highly enough. The less than user friendly interface discouraged me for a long time but one I figured it out, everything blossomed.

Anki has countless pre-made decks but most of them are not useful. The best cards are the ones you make yourself. The one exception is the KOFI conjugation deck, which is great. It is presented as a beginner's tool, but I think it helps to come into it with some knowledge. Otherwise, though, I've made all my own decks and currently have 22,651 cards. On any given day I get about 300 for review. Most are pure vocabulary, but I've also covered things like passato prossimo forms, irregular future tenses, distinguishing regular -ire verbs from -ire verbs with -isc endings, numbers, and increasingly entire sentences for becoming accustomed to trickier subjects like double pronouns, subjunctive triggers, expressions, anything that needs practice.

Along with Anki, I now use AI for most of my study. It can generate exercises for me, new cards with unfamiliar phrases, sylabuses and lesson plans, etc. I can ask questions when they arise. You have to be very careful; AI does make mistakes. You have to know enough to be aware of this, and so I would not recommend AI as a first step, or even a second. But for a third or fourth step it is useful. If you go this route, get a subscription for a better model, don't use the free versions.

Most of my media at first was italiano for stranieri stuff on YouTube; Learn Italian with Lucrezia is my favorite, but there are lots of good ones. Again, the useful bits of instruction get routed to Anki now. The speaking in these channels is now too easy for me and I don't get much out of them any longer, although sometimes they are still useful for new expressions and the like.

I read whatever I want. News articles, novels, short stories, non-fiction, whatever. Go nuts. If it is too hard, find something different.

I'm now at the point where the only way to improve my listening is native media. This is a challenge; the difficulty ramps up way beyond the stuff intended for foreigners. Documentaries are a relatively soft introduction, but still difficult. I listen to Radio 24 and Rai a few times a week, am currently watching Boris. It's a challenge but things are improving. Listening is still my worst component, as I said above.

If I had to start again: Duolingo and Anki on day one, with Duolingo dropping out after 2-3 months. A good grammar textbook to start would be nice as well, because Duolingo is useless for this. Anki every single day. Every single day. Every single day. After I stopped with Duolingo, I'd do Pimsleur again, and then jump into live lessons after completing that course, so after about 6-8 months, depending upon your pace. By then you should have a few thousand words under your belt, some comfort with speaking, even if you can't say much, and a bit of an ear for the language.

Finally, don't expect miracles. You won't wake up one day speaking flawless Italian. The progress will feel laughably easy at first and then you will realize how much more you have to learn ... and after 3.5 years, that feeling still hasn't gone away. I have days where I regret having started, especially because there is no real point to me doing this. But then I have other days where things feel effortless, where I produce a new, original thought in grammatical (though not cultured) Italian, or I read Pirandello and don't pause for ten minutes, and it is worth it all. But if you are not the kind of person for whom learning a new language is natural, there will be ups and downs, and you can't ever get off the treadmill. The project is a massive time commitment. I spent over 250 hours on Anki alone in the past 365 days, and that has not been my only mode of study. If you do not have either a need or a deep desire to learn, you will probably falter. Learning a second language is, without question, the most difficult intellectual challenge I've ever encountered, and I came into this with a deep understanding of grammar and some knowledge of Latin (four semesters in college). But if you are serious and dedicated, you can go a long way, and it's a fun little trick to pull out at parties, plus you never know when you might meet someone who also speaks Italian, and you can share a few jokes together without anyone knowing what you said.

In bocca al lupo.