Reinforce your Italian knowledge

Italian Learning Tips

• Italian pronunciation and spelling are consistent and uniform.
• You’ll see that some Italian words have accent marks above certain letters - these help with accurate pronunciation. Occasionally an accent separates one word from another that is indistinguishable apart for the mark. For example, e and è.
• Italian nouns are divided into two genders: masculine and feminine.
• Don’t worry if you come across sentences without subjects. Rosetta Stone will help you learn to identify the speaker or who is being spoken about via the verb form.
• Italian has both polite and informal methods of addressing others. Which one you use depends on the age of the speaker and his or her relationship to the addressee.
• Lei is the polite way to express the second person. The word Lei and some associated pronouns are always capitalised, even when they appear in the middle of a sentence and sometimes at the end of words.