Italian lessons for Americans, taught from Italy.

Why learn from a teacher in Italy rather than one nearby

There are good Italian teachers in the United States. What they cannot give you is the thing our students keep saying mattered most: a teacher whose Italian is current. Language drifts. The Italian taught by someone who emigrated in 1994 is not the Italian spoken in Bologna this morning, and the gap shows up exactly where it hurts, in slang, in what sounds natural, in what makes an Italian smile rather than pause.

Our teachers were born and educated in Italy and live there now. When you ask whether people really say something, the answer comes from someone who heard it at the bar yesterday.

The time zones, practically

• East Coast. Six hours behind Italy. Your 8am is their 2pm, your 1pm their 7pm. Mornings are the easy win, and early afternoons work comfortably.
• Central and Mountain. Seven and eight hours. Early mornings, or late evenings Italian time, which several of our teachers keep deliberately for US students.
• West Coast. Nine hours behind. Your 7am to 11am is their afternoon and early evening, and this is the slot most of our California students settle into permanently.
• Daylight saving. The US and Italy switch on different dates, so twice a year the gap moves by an hour for a couple of weeks. Your teacher handles it and tells you in advance.

What Americans specifically tend to be learning for

Four reasons come up over and over, and they need different lessons. A trip, often long-planned and specific, which is Italian for travel. A move or a retirement, which is Italian before relocating. Family: a surname, a grandmother, cousins in a town in Calabria, which is the heritage learner path. And a passport application, where the language requirement is certified B1.

We ask which of these you are on the free consultation, because the answer changes the syllabus more than your level does.

The things that trip up English speakers

Italian is one of the more forgiving languages for an English speaker: the spelling is phonetic, the pronunciation is regular, and thousands of words are recognisable on sight. The predictable difficulties are gendered nouns, two past tenses where English has one, the subjunctive, and the pronoun clusters that make gliene look like a typo. All of them are ordinary teaching problems, and none of them are a reason anyone fails to learn Italian.

The real obstacle is almost always the same: not enough hours of speaking out loud. Which is what a private lesson is for.