Your first Italian: greet anyone, and say who you are: the two things every conversation opens with.
Giorno 1~60 minutesInput
Day 1 of 100 · Roma
Benvenuto — before we start
This course teaches you to use Italian, not to recite rules about it. Every day you meet real Italian first, pull the pattern out of it, then say it out loud. Today you leave able to greet someone and introduce yourself, the single most reusable exchange in the language.
Listen first: two people meet
Read this twice. Don't translate word by word. Get the gist, then notice how much you already understand. Italian rewards guessing.
Now the same meeting between two young people. Watch what changes:
Fra amici · informal
Luca
Ciao! Come ti chiami?
Hi! What's your name? (informal)
Giulia
Sono Giulia. E tu?
I'm Giulia. And you?
Luca
Luca. Piacere!
Luca. Nice to meet you!
The pattern: saying who you are
You just met the single most useful Italian verb, essere (to be), twice, in the form you'll use most:
Core pattern
Sono = "I am"
To say your name, Italians don't say "my name is". They usually just say Sono + name: Sono Marco.Sono Giulia. That's it. (You can also say Mi chiamo…, literally "I call myself…", both everyday.)
To ask, the words change with who you're talking to. This is the day's big idea:
Informal (a friend, a peer): Come ti chiami? → E tu?
Formal (a stranger, someone older, service): Come si chiama? → E Lei?
We'll conjugate essere fully tomorrow. Today, sono is all you need to put yourself into any conversation.
tu or Lei? — the choice that never goes away
Italian forces a decision English doesn't: tu (informal "you") or Lei (formal "you") with every person. Default to Lei with adults you don't know, shopkeepers, and anyone older; switch to tu with friends, kids, and peers. Getting this right signals respect, and marks you instantly as someone who actually knows Italy.
Today's words
Eight words, every one high-frequency. The band shows how common the word is in everyday Italian: the lower the number, the more you'll hear it.
Good news: Italian is phonetic. It's said exactly as it's written, with no silent letters and almost no exceptions. Two rules carry you a long way:
Pure vowels.a e i o u are crisp and never glide: ciao is "CHA-o", two clean vowels, not the English "chow".
Double consonants are held.nonno (grandad) ≠ nono (ninth). You actually pause on the doubled letter.
Here are two greetings from native speakers. Play them and copy the melody:
ciaobuongiorno
Esercizio
Fix it in place
Right greeting, right time. Which do you say at 9 a.m.? At 8 p.m.? To a friend on the street? (buongiorno · buonasera · ciao)
Fill the gap. "_____ Marco. E _____?" You're talking to a stranger at a hotel desk. (→ Sono Marco. E Lei?)
tu or Lei? You address: (a) a child, (b) a doctor, (c) your new flatmate your age, (d) an elderly neighbour. Mark each.
Say it back. Cover the English and read the formal dialogue aloud twice, once as each person.
Produci — say it out loud (2 minutes)
Out loud, to your phone's voice recorder, introduce yourself twice:
Formally, as if meeting a colleague: Buongiorno! Sono [your name]. Piacere.
Informally, as if meeting a friend of a friend: Ciao! Sono [your name]. E tu?
Play it back. Are your vowels clean? Did you hold any double consonants? That's the whole loop: input, pattern, output. You just closed it on Day 1.
Sound like a local
Native speakers rarely announce "mi chiamo" in casual life. They just say Sono Giulia and offer a hand. Lead with sono, add piacere, and you already sound less like a textbook and more like someone who belongs.
Da ricordare · today's takeaways
Sono + name puts you into any conversation, the most useful three seconds of Italian you'll learn.
Italian makes you choose tu (informal) or Lei (formal) with every person; default to Lei with strangers.
Greetings are time-bound: buongiorno by day, buonasera by evening, ciao only with people you'd use tu with.
Italian is phonetic: pure vowels, held double consonants, read exactly as written.