A1 Italian Vocabulary List, Beginner CEFR Words

Core survival Italian: greetings, pronouns, basic verbs (essere, avere, fare, andare), numbers, colors, and everyday objects.

Roughly 0–6 months of study.

About A1

A1 Italian covers the survival core: greetings (ciao, buongiorno, grazie), introductions, numbers, days, family, and the most frequent verbs (essere, avere, fare, andare, venire, volere). You meet gendered nouns (-o masculine, -a feminine, -e ambiguous) and the formal-informal distinction (Lei vs tu). Around 500 active words gets you through tourist situations and basic conversation.

Who this list is for

If you can introduce yourself, ask for the price, count to 100, and order food, you're around A1. Most learners reach A1 in 60–90 hours. Speakers of other Romance languages pick up A1 Italian very fast; Spanish in particular shares roughly 80% lexical similarity. CELI Impatto / Livello 1 is the equivalent A1 certificate.

How to study

At A1 the two early bottlenecks are pronunciation (double consonants matter: pizza vs piza) and gender. Spend the first weeks on the sounds, including the gli, gn, and rolled r. Use spaced repetition for nouns with their article (il libro, la casa, lo studente). Don't over-drill conjugations; focus on first-person and third-person forms in the present tense.

The list (961 words)

Choosing an app