No classrooms, no set routines

For me I have always enjoyed languages and regularly learnt Latin and French at school, and then I learnt Japanese. The joy of sitting at a bar with the locals speaking in their own language always thrills me!

I began to learn Italian by studying a text book, but to be confident in the language I needed a more intensive approach, and luckily I came across Verbalplanet. This service provided the framework and the means for an incredible learning experience. Since starting over a year ago I have been having two lessons per week – no classrooms, no set routines.

The processing of booking and paying for lessons is so easy, and I have been encouraging anyone wanting to listen, to do the same with any other language! Sometimes I have lessons from a hotel room in Paris, or an apartment on the Cote d’Azur in France, or from my home in New Zealand – the booking system even manages the time differences perfectly!

Quick Facts: Italian

The Italian language is a Romance language spoken by about 70 million people, primarily in Italy and San Marino. It is also one of the official languages of Switzerland and is the second official language in Vatican City. Italian forms part of the Indo-European family of languages.

The history of the Italian language is quite complex but the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. Italian was first formalized in the first years of the 14th century through the works of Dante Alighieri, who mixed southern Italian languages, especially Sicilian, with his native Tuscan in his epic poems known collectively as the Commedia.