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Learn Italian

Most of the people who learn Italian worldwide do so out of a fascination with Italian culture, a phenomenon which is so widespread that there’s a word for it: Italophilia. As the home of the Roman Empire, Italy is the cradle of Western civilisation. To understand Italian, therefore, is to understand history, the arts, and the fundamental principles of philosophy, science, and mathematics. It’s no wonder we’re obsessed! Modern Italian developed from the Tuscan dialect - specifically the form spoken in the 14th century, which was used by literary figures of the time including Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarca. In fact, it was Dante’s Divine Comedy which ignited a conversation about standardising the country’s many regional dialects, thus encouraging the development of modern Italian. Though this modern standard is spoken across the country today, Italy is still home to a wide variety of different dialects. On our Italian courses, you’ll learn Standard Italian but you’ll also cover local dialectal forms, giving you a well-rounded view of the language and of the culture in your place of study.

We have schools in a variety of locations, including culturally significant cities like Rome, Florence, and Venice. If you prefer to stay at the beach, why not study in a beautiful town like Tropea or Salerno? Whatever you’re looking for, we can help you arrange an immersive experience and create memories to last a lifetime.

Italian is spoken by a total of 85 million people worldwide, primarily in the Italian peninsula but also in regions of Switzerland, Australia, and the Americas. It is still used as a lingua franca in ex-colonial countries like Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and over half the population in both Albania and Malta use it regularly. What’s more, as a daughter of Vulgar Latin - i.e. the ‘common tongue’, from which all other Romance languages derive - Italian is closely related to other European languages including French, Spanish, and Portuguese. If you learn Italian, you’ll find that you can easier understand other Latin languages, which could come in handy!

By attending an Italian course at one of our schools, you can unlock the myriad charms of Italy, which are almost too many to numerate. It’s home to more UNESCO World Heritage Sites than anywhere else in the world, many of which date back to the dawn of Western civilisation. It’s the mother of great minds like Galileo, Fibonacci, and Cassini, and of artists like da Vinci and Michelangelo, whose works still draw millions of admirers each year. It’s also the home of luxury fashion houses and fast cars, of world-renowned cuisine and of classical music. With your new-found language skills, you can gain a deeper understanding of these iconic features of Italian life and communicate with the locals like a native.


Our Italian language locations