Italian: how hard it is, what stands behind it, and the level a university requires

The one organisation that counts this in hours

The Foreign Service Institute prepares American diplomats for work abroad and publishes indicative training timelines for each language, drawn from many years of practice. This is not a magazine ranking of easy and difficult languages. It is a working estimate of how many weeks are usually needed to reach level 3 on the Interagency Language Roundtable scale in speaking and listening.

Italian sits in category I, languages close to English, with 24 weeks or 552 class hours. The Institute also states the regime behind that figure: 23 hours a week in class and 17 hours of self-study.

The Institute adds its own caveat: the figures are averages and depend on aptitude, previous language learning and time in class. They are also calculated for native English speakers. For a Russian-speaking learner the balance shifts, usually in their favour.

What makes Italian fast at the start

The first advantage shows up on day one: the written word is pronounced very nearly as it is spelled. Italian has neither the spelling lottery of English nor the silent endings of French. Once a few reading rules are learned, an unfamiliar word can be pronounced correctly straight away, which means reading aloud and listening can begin in the first lesson.

The second is the sound system. Five clear vowels, largely predictable stress and few sounds that are absent from Russian. A Russian-speaking learner has a noticeably easier time here than an English-speaking one, because far less articulation has to be relearned.

The third is recognisable vocabulary. Latin roots and borrowings make a large body of words guessable without a dictionary: università, situazione, problema, importante, musica, architettura. Anyone who has studied English brings with them hundreds of Romance parallels already embedded in that language.

Hence the familiar impression of the first few weeks, that Italian carries itself along. The impression is accurate, but it describes the entry to the language rather than the whole distance.

Where Italian stops being easy

The difficulty arrives later and is concentrated in one place: the verb. An extensive tense system, the sequence of tenses, and above all the conditional together with the subjunctive, the congiuntivo, which is alive and obligatory in Italian where Russian manages with a single form.

The second threshold is the past tenses. The distinction between the passato prossimo and the imperfetto does not reduce to a rule about completed against continuous action: the choice often depends on how the speaker views the event. This is precisely the kind of distinction that no table teaches and that needs practice with a tutor.

The third is prepositions and the pronominal particles ne and ci, which have no single equivalent in Russian. They do not prevent a learner from being understood, but they are what separates confident B2 speech from the speech of someone still translating in their head.

A language with its own academy since 1583

Italian has a feature that is rare even among European languages: an institution that has attended to it without interruption for more than four centuries. The Accademia della Crusca in Florence held its first meeting on its statutes and rules on 25 January 1583, and opened formally on 25 March 1585.

The name is worth explaining, because it states the programme. Crusca is Italian for bran. The academy's task was framed through the image of milling: to sift the language as flour is sifted, separating out the bran and keeping the flower, the finest part. In 1590 the academy took as its emblem the frullone, the sieve used to separate the fine flour from the bran, and as its motto a line from Petrarch, il più bel fior ne coglie.

The result of that work was the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, printed in Venice and published in 1612. It provoked immediate dispute over its pronounced preference for the Florentine of fourteenth-century authors, yet for centuries it served as the common reference: in a politically and linguistically divided Italy it was the essential instrument for anyone who wished to write good Italian.

From which follows something rarely said aloud: literary Italian took shape before the Italian state did. The standard came first and the country afterwards.

Where Italian works as a professional language

In some fields Italian terminology has become international and is never translated. Music is the obvious case: allegro, andante, forte, piano, crescendo, sonata, concerto and opera read the same way on a score in any country. A musician learns these words regardless, and so does not start Italian from nothing.

The same holds in art history and architecture, with chiaroscuro, sfumato, affresco, piazza, loggia and palazzo, and in food, where Italian names have displaced local ones almost everywhere. This is not a vague claim about a beautiful language but a concrete professional advantage for anyone working in those fields.

Italy itself is a further argument. According to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Italy has 62 properties inscribed on the World Heritage List, more than any other country; China has 61, France 56, Germany 55 and Spain 50. For an art historian, architect, conservator or designer the language is not an ornament to the profession but access to the sources and to the people who work with those sites.

The counterintuitive argument: few people learn Italian

Italian does not appear among the three most studied foreign languages in EU school statistics. Eurostat figures for 2024 show 30.3% of lower secondary pupils in the EU learning French, 19.2% Spanish and 18.9% German, while English was close to universal at 97.6%.

Where the language stops being a private matter

Everything above holds for someone learning Italian for themselves: they set the pace and decide when the level is enough. The moment the goal becomes a place at an Italian university, the state takes over that judgement, and it arrives with a figure, a deadline and a consequence. What follows is how that works, according to the official document.

What the ministry actually requires

The rule sits in a document with a long name: the procedures for entry, residence, enrolment and recognition of qualifications for international students. They run for two academic years at once, 2026/27 and 2027/28. The Ministry of Universities and Research drafts them together with the ministries of education, foreign affairs and the interior, and the Universitaly portal publishes them.

Section six, on language, puts the requirement plainly: each institution organises its own assessment of Italian and sets its own required level, but never below B2. The assessment is compulsory for all bachelor's, master's and single-cycle degree programmes. For a foundation course the bar is lower, at B1 in the language of instruction.

Where the real difference begins: B2 against C1

The same section then draws a distinction that summaries tend to lose. The procedures describe two separate groups of applicants exempt from the language test.

The first group holds a certificate at B2 or above from a recognised awarding body. Such an applicant is exempt from the test but, in the wording of the document, remains within the limit of the respective quotas of places reserved for visa-seeking applicants resident abroad.

The second group holds a C1 or C2 certificate issued within the CLIQ quality system. These applicants are exempt from the language test irrespective of the number of reserved places.

These are two different things. B2 removes the language test. C1 and C2 remove the quota limit as well, which changes not the applicant's preparation but the competition they enter.

On a programme with restricted access the difference is tangible. Places for visa-seeking international applicants are allocated as a separate quota, and the university announces how many there are. A C1 certificate issued within CLIQ takes the applicant out of that narrow pool. The University of Bologna states the consequence directly: a holder of a group 2 certificate competes alongside applicants from EU countries.

Which certificates count

CLIQ stands for Certificazione Lingua Italiana di Qualità, an association of four awarding bodies: the University for Foreigners of Perugia, the University for Foreigners of Siena, Roma Tre University and the Società Dante Alighieri. The four signed the founding act in 2011, and in 2013 the association concluded an agreement with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs recognising its role.

All four carry equal weight: the University of Bologna lists CELI B2, CILS B2, PLIDA B2 and CERT.IT B2 in a single group. Choosing between them is a question of where the examination centre is and when the sittings fall, not of prestige.

A language course is not a certificate

This is where applicants lose months. The university language centre runs Italian courses at A2, B1 and B2 and issues a course certificate at the end. The University of Bologna states explicitly that this certificate does not meet the Italian language requirement for a non-EU applicant resident abroad. Nor does the university's own free online course.

The reverse case is worth knowing too. Where an Italian course was completed at that same university's language centre to at least B2 in a previous academic year, Bologna does accept it. The rule turns on the institution and the level, not on the idea of a course in general.

The second route: the university's own test

A certificate is not the only way through. Each university is obliged to run its own assessment, and the result carries the same weight. At Bologna this is the ITA-L2@HOME online test delivered by the CISIA consortium: 72 questions in 120 minutes, across listening, reading and language structures. Registration costs €18 and is not refundable. For 2026/27 the minimum score is 48.

The procedures require this assessment to take place before the visa application and preferably at a distance. The university uploads the result into the pre-enrolment application, which relieves the consulate of checking the language again. That is why the language stage cannot be deferred until after admission: it comes before the visa.

One further line in the same section: an applicant who has not passed the language test is not admitted to any further entrance or aptitude examinations. Language is a condition of entering the selection, not a task running alongside it.

The calendar decides more than the level

Reaching B2 is not enough on its own; it has to be reached in time. For open-access programmes the University of Bologna sets a hard date: the language requirement must be met by 19 November 2026. For restricted-access programmes the deadline comes from the call for applications, and it is usually earlier.

Verifying an uploaded certificate takes time as well. The university publishes sessions, each with an upload date and a separate checking date roughly a week later. A certificate uploaded after the final session will not be checked in time.

There is a further trap. A certificate attached to the pre-enrolment application on Universitaly does not count for this purpose. It has to be uploaded into the university's own procedure, or the applicant is treated as not having met the requirement.

One deadline governs the whole visa stage: for 2026/27 entry, visa applications must be submitted by 30 November 2026, and for 2027/28 entry by 31 October 2027.

English does not cancel Italian

A programme taught in English exempts the applicant from the Italian test but not from proving language ability. The procedures require a certificate at B2 or above in the language of instruction, covering all four skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing. A certificate covering three of them will not be accepted at the consulate.

There is also a practical side the rules say nothing about. Administrative correspondence, a tenancy agreement, a question at the faculty office, a doctor, a bank and part-time work all happen in Italian. A student on an English-taught programme manages without it in the lecture hall, but not outside it.

How long the route to B2 takes

There is no universal figure. Progress depends on the starting level, the intensity of study and whether the student already knows another Romance language. It is more useful to plan backwards from a date than forwards from a month count: first the university's deadline, then the nearest examination sitting before it, then the preparation time, and only then the start of lessons.

Where to begin when the language is not for admission

One sequence saves months: establish the objective first, then the programme of study. Speaking freely on holiday, reading art-historical texts in the original, working with Italian suppliers and studying on an Italian-taught degree produce four different plans, four different vocabularies and four different sets of skills. No single beginners' course serves all four.

The next step is an honest assessment of the starting point. Experience of any Romance language, a good command of English and a background in music or art history all accelerate the early stages appreciably, and it is better to account for that at the outset than after the first month.

Who teaches Italian at EDMONT

Individual preparation is led by a specialist Italian tutor with professional teaching qualifications and continued methodological development. The tutor can be engaged either as a standalone arrangement or as part of an admissions strategy for Italy.

The work is individual throughout. Depending on the starting level, the objective and the timeline, the programme may cover structured grammar, spoken fluency, pronunciation, comprehension of natural speech, vocabulary building and preparation for an academic environment.

For applicants there is an additional layer: the EDMONT team establishes the language requirements of the selected universities and the deadlines by which they must be met, and the tutor then builds the language trajectory around that particular admissions strategy.

That professional development runs through the same institutions this guide cites as sources. The Education Office of the Consulate General of Italy in Moscow is the body that runs the programme for the diffusion of Italian in Russia, and its methodological programmes for teachers have been completed and documented.

• Professional retraining in the theory and methodology of teaching Italian language and culture; a qualification in teaching Italian language and culture.
• Methodological programmes run by the Education Office of the Consulate General of Italy in Moscow with the Association of Teachers of Italian (AILI): business Italian, and teaching Italian to children and adolescents.
• Methodological training at the Italian department of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University, on the design of coursebooks and teaching materials.
• Professional programmes by the publisher Edilingua on contemporary teaching methodology, with contributions from Paolo Balboni, Telis Marin and Pierangela Diadori — authors whose coursebooks are used to teach Italian worldwide.
• Additional methodological training in teaching Italian to children and adolescents.

What the preparation covers

Individual Italian language preparation is a standalone EDMONT service and is charged separately from admissions support.

When Italian is needed for admission

For an applicant, language preparation has to be connected to the wider admissions strategy. The EDMONT team first establishes the requirements of the particular programmes and the deadlines by which they must be met; the tutor then assesses the starting level and builds preparation backwards from the required result and the date by which it has to be reached.

Two things need to be told apart here. Formal eligibility is the university requirement met: a certificate at the required level, or a test passed by the stated deadline. Genuine readiness to study is the ability to follow a lecture, take part in a seminar and write academic work in Italian. The first grants access to the selection; the second determines what the first year of study will be like.

Language then becomes part of the admissions calendar rather than a task running alongside it.

What this changes in preparation

One practical conclusion follows. The language target is set from the requirements of the particular programme and its calendar, not in the abstract. For an open-access programme B2 by the November deadline is enough. For a restricted-access programme it is worth calculating what C1 delivers: not a stronger profile in a vague sense, but exit from a separate quota.

This is why Italian language preparation at EDMONT begins with the requirements of the selected universities rather than with a coursebook. A specialist tutor establishes the current level, and the plan is built around the particular examination and the application deadline, so that the language stage sits inside applying to universities in Italy rather than alongside it.