Italian is among the most approachable European languages at the start — it's written as it's spoken and early progress comes fast — and gets demanding in the middle, where the past tenses and the subjunctive arrive. The difficulty isn't spread evenly: almost all of it sits between A2 and B2.
Three things that are easy
Pronunciation. Every letter has one sound and keeps it: read a word and you can say it. No Germanic language offers that, and the practical consequence is that you start speaking — badly, but intelligibly — in week one.
Vocabulary. Thousands of Italian words are already in global circulation, from food to music, and the abstract vocabulary is largely Latin, so it's recognisable to any European-language speaker.
The early climb. Present tense, three conjugations, and you can already say a great deal. The curve is steep in the good sense: little effort, high return.
Three things that are hard
The two past tenses. Ho mangiato and mangiavo often translate to the same English form but say different things: a finished event versus a background or a habit. It isn't a rule to memorise, it's a different way of looking at time.
The subjunctive. It arrives at B1 and marks the line between speaking correctly and speaking well. Conjugating it is easy; hearing when it's needed is not, because it depends on the speaker's stance toward what they're saying.
Prepositions. A, in, da, di have no stable English equivalents. You learn them one expression at a time, and this is the part where intuition doesn't help.
Where nearly everyone stalls
The hard point isn't the beginning, it's upper A2: the moment the present tense stops being enough and you have to handle three past tenses, double pronouns and exceptions. Many people read that slowdown as a personal limit when it's simply the shape of the curve.
Those who push through reach B2 with an ease out of all proportion to the effort just spent. It's worth knowing in advance, because it's the one stretch where gritting your teeth beats changing method.
Related questions
Is Italian harder than Spanish?
They're rated the same difficulty for English speakers. Italian pronunciation is slightly more consistent; Spanish has a marginally simpler past-tense system in everyday speech.
What's the hardest part of Italian?
The subjunctive, and choosing between passato prossimo and imperfetto. Together they account for most of the errors made by learners who already speak well.
Updated 2026-07-29