ItalianPod101 Promo Codes: Verified December, 2021

77% Off ItalianPod101

Enjoy 77% off lifetime Premium access to ItalianPod101 and 2 other languages of your choice! Savings are also based on 5-year use of the program but offer is valid for life. Click on the link below to access the secret offer page.

60% Off ItalianPod101

Enjoy 60% off lifetime Premium access to ItalianPod101. Savings are calculated based on 5-year use of the program but offer is valid for life. Click on the link below to access the secret offer page.

30% Off ItalianPod101

New and existing subscribers can get 30% off any plan with potential savings of up to $165 on a 2-year subscription. 30% off is automatically applied to your cart when you click on the link below.

How To Use ItalianPod101 Coupon Codes

First-Time Users:

Click on a link above to have the discount automatically applied to your purchase. Then select your plan and subscription length, enter payment information and complete your order.

Existing Users:

Simply log in to your ItalianPod101 account and activate offer by clicking on the link provided.

Do These Coupon Codes Work Everywhere?

Yes. There are no geographical restrictions for these promo codes.

Should I go with Basic, Premium or Premium PLUS?

BASIC:

With this plan, you get full access to the lesson library and any future updates. This is ideal for those who only want to learn basic Italian or who want to test the waters before fully committing to a more costly plan.

PREMIUM:

With more resources, learning tools and periodic assessments, this plan is for those whose goal is to become fluent in Italian.

PREMIUM PLUS:

With this plan, you get all the features of the previous two plans plus exclusive one-on-one instruction, professional assessment and a curriculum that’s tailored to your needs.

Quick Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your ItalianPod101 Subscription

1. Set study alerts on your phone to remind you.
2. Make use of offline resources like printable PDF lessons.
3. Listen to podcasts while you jog or exercise.
4. Watch movies and listen to music in Italian.
5. Keep close track of your progress through your dashboard.

Still not sure about ItalianPod101? Use this link to get one month Premium access for $1.

I learnt French on my Erasmus exchange year and it was my first foreign language to learn. My next language after French was Italian as I had fallen in love with the bel paese on a 2-week long trip there at the end of my Erasmus year.

Having learnt both languages in quick succession, I am really aware of how similar and different these two Romance languages are in fact.

Two questions I am often asked are:

1. How similar are French and Italian?
2. Didn’t you get confused between the two languages when learning them one after the other?

Learning French? Read: Is FrenchPod101 worth it? 

In this article, I’m going to answer these 2 frequently asked questions.

Origins of French and Italian

French and Italian are both Romance languages. That means that they are derived from Latin which was the language of the Roman Empire.

With the collapse of the Roman Empire around the 5th century, dialects of Vulgar Latin started to form over time in some of the Roman territories.

Today while a large number of these dialects are still in use, for political reasons there are just a handful of major derived languages that are similar in grammar and vocabulary.

These are official languages of the following European countries:

French (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Monaco), Italian (Italy, Switzerland, Vatican City and San Marino), Spanish (Spain), Portuguese (Portugal), Catalan (Andorra) and Romanian (Romania and Moldova).

All these languages are mutually intelligible to a certain extent thanks to their common origins.

Italian and French languages share the same history, but their roots are different. The territory of France was inhabited by Gauls and after occupied by Romans, while Italy always remained part of the Roman Empire. So only after the Germanic Wars (which occurred between 113 BC and 596 AD) did the local languages (Visigothic, Burgundian, Alemannic, and Frankish, Romanolo, Veneto) that are different from the Latin slowly start to develop.

Different historic periods and changes provoked the development of new dialects, many of which, still exist today.

So standard Italian is based on Tuscan dialect due to the political and economic situation of the époque but there are also distinct dialects, as Florentine dialect and the Italo-Dalmatian variant with Sicilian and Dalmatian dialects.

On the other hand, Modern French is based on the language of Île-de-France or the langue d’oïl  but even today other languages such as Breton, Basque, Occitan (langue d’oc), Alsacian, Flemish and Catalan are still spoken in the different regions of France.

French has spread further across the world than Italian due to France’s relative success as a colonial power. As a result, French is an official language in 29 countries spanning the globe, including the Americas (e.g. Canada), Africa (e.g. Congo) and Oceania (e.g. Vanuatu).

So how different are French and Italian?

The lexical similarity between French and Italian is around 85-90%. That means that almost 9/10s of the two languages’ words are similar but does not mean that they are necessarily mutually intelligible to native speakers due to big differences in pronunciation and syntax.

Grammatical differences

– In French, subject pronoun is used in writing and speaking form, when in Italian it is written, but usually, it isn’t used in conversation. For example, J’aime voyager (I love to travel) is Amo viaggiare in Italian;

– In French direct object pronoun (le, la, les) is used before the verb, when in Italian they are attached to the end of verbs in the infinitive form. For example, je veux la voir (I want to see her) in Italian is Voglio vederla;

– The negative form construction is different in French and Italian. In French we add part “ne” before the verb and the part “pas” after the verb, when in Italian we put just part “non” before the verb. For example, je ne parle pas Français” (I don’t speak French) is equal to non parlo italiano in Italian;

– In French, the plural forms are created by adding “s” in the end as it is in English, when in Italian there are irregular plural forms, for example, uomo (man) = uomini (men);

Have you learnt Italian, French or both? Or Italian and Spanish? Or perhaps you’ve learnt two or more languages from the same language family? If so, I’d love to hear your experiences. Write them in the comments section below this post or send me a message! I read all the comments that I receive.

Interested in learning Italian online? We have some great coupons for ItalianPod101.

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

languagetsar.com/

When I arrived I was taken aback by the number and variety of dialects spoken on a daily basis by Italians of which I struggled to understand anything!

While it’s true that Italians will generally speak to foreigners in standard or regional Italian, not understanding at least the gist of what is said in the most common dialects will leave you missing out on significant parts of Italian culture due to their use on TV and cinema as well as live on the streets when you travel around the bel paese (‘beautiful country’).

Here I’m going to give you a useful overview of languages and dialects along with my own personal experience of interacting with them in Italy.

Overview of languages and dialects in Italy

As you can see in the linguistic map of Italy, the country has a rich smattering of languages and dialects all over.

First of all it’s important what is considered a separate language from Italian and what it considered an Italian dialect.

Italy has a significant number of ‘indigenous’ minority languages, primarily:

German, Albanian, Greek, Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, Catalan, Occitan, Sardinian, Sicilian and Ladin.

As the line between dialect and separate language is hard to distinguish, I will not classify the rest of Italy’s dialects/languages as it is not necessary for the Italian language learner to make that distinction.

What is more important is understanding these separate languages/dialects and how they interact with Italian.
As the Italian language is believed to be spoken as la lingua toscana in bocca romana (‘Tuscan language with Roman pronunciation’), the further away from these varieties you go, the harder it becomes to understand as a learner of Italian.

In general without much experience to dialects, my experience was that I struggled to understand more than 50% of what was being said, relying instead on context to make a educated guess as to the meaning.

Here’s a great example of Italian dialects (in Italian with subtitles in both Italian and English if you select them) with the famous Italian hyperpolyglot, Luca Lampariello, in the video below.

Campanilismo which comes from the word campanile meaning ‘bell tower’, signifies the Italian attachment to their home town along with its culture and of course its particular accent and dialect (of Italian or of a minority language).

It’s through this prism of local attachment that an Italian language learner should view regional linguistic differences.

What to focus on as an Italian language learner

I lived in Bologna in northern Italy for one year and have continued to spend lots of time with Italian friends from all the country since then.

Moreover, I watched a lot of Italian films, in which regional differences add a particular color or mood to a scene.

For me, it was important to recognize and understand if a character spoke with a Roman, Sicilian, Tuscan or Milanese accent and dialect, in particular, as these are probably the most commonly found on screen.

In real life, I found Sicilian particularly hard to understand when traveling around the island but most locals did switch to a regional version of Italian that was easier to understand albeit using more of the passato remoto (a past tense no longer used when spoken in northern Italy) than I was used to.

When sitting at a cafe in Monreale overlooking Palermo, I even met a group of teenagers who struggled to speak Italian naturally as they almost exclusively spoke Sicilian. Italian was really like a foreign language to them.

The Tuscan accent is also quite unusual as it has weaker ‘c’ and ‘g’ sounds than standard Italian. As a result, ‘coca cola’ is pronounced as if it were ‘hoha hola’ (by a native English speaker). I found this to be quite a charming local quirk.

I have also skied quite frequently in Alto Adige (Südtirol in German) where the main language spoken in German. In general I did not have too much difficulty communicating with locals in German as they seemed quite used to speaking with foreigners and used standard German with me in general.

Dialects and regional languages add an extra spice to learning Italian and traveling around my favorite country in Europe.

While they are an extra burden for the learner (compare with Russian here), take a little time to become familiar with them and will find that they will enrich your Italian travel experience even a little more!

Have you ever learnt Italian or traveled around Italy using the local language(s)? Let me know about your experiences in the comments section below!

If you’re interested in learning Italian, read our recent review of ItalianPod101.

Leggi l’articolo in italiano qua!

*By Mikima – File:Linguistic_map_of_Italy.svg, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47109387

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

languagetsar.com/