This series focuses on Fluent Forever’s alphabetical list of the 625 most commonly used words in any language, presented 10 words at a time with their Italian translation.

“Not all words are created equal: we use certain words far more often than others…We get a lot of mileage out of our most frequent words…With only a thousand words [of your target language] you’ll recognize nearly 75 percent of what you read. With two thousand, you’ll hit 80 percent.”

–Gabriel Wyner, Fluent Forever

Word bank: 

Practice these high-frequency words on Quizlet.

Level: Give it a Try

• Un miliardo is a very grande number. 
• There are different types of bills. In a restaurant, one says, “il conto, please.” An invoice for things such as water or electricity is una bolletta.  For money, it’s called una banconota or una cartamoneta.
• The national uccello of Italy is the blue bird.
• The ocean was a beautiful blu when we sailed our barca.
• Il sangue flows through il corpo.
• The night was dark and nero.
• Some say that love is cieco.

“Ad ogni uccello il suo nido è bello” — Italian proverb

“To every bird his nest is beautiful” (which is English’s ‘Home Sweet Home’)

Level: Challenge

• Un miliardo è un numero molto grande.
• Ci sono diversi tipi di bills. In un ristorante, si dice, “il conto, per favore.”  Una fattura per cose come acqua o corrente, è una bolletta. Per i soldi, si chiama una banconota o una cartamoneta. 🙂
• L’uccello nazionale d’Italia è lo sialia.
• L’oceano era un blu molto bello quando abbiamo manovrato la nostra barca.
• Il sangue fluisce nel corpo.
• Il notte era buio e nero.
• Alcuni dicono che l’amore è cieco.

Helpful Grammar Links

• Plurals in Italian: In general, singular masculine nouns ending in “0” change to “i”; singular feminine nouns ending in “a” change to “e”. Some words end in “e” and always change to “i” in the plural.
• Adjectives are “matchy matchy” – the ending of an adjective matches in gender and number with the noun they are describing.
• Definite articles: Italian uses definite articles (“the”) much more than English, and each “the” can be different depending on if the noun in question is male or female.
• Indefinite articles (“a”/”an”)

Language Resources

 Forvo, Google Translate, Fluent Forever, WordReference

Catch up on Weekend Italian

Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4

This post first appeared on Prayers and Piazzas.