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Half the fun of an Italian vacation is planning, and nothing will prepare you better than this app!
La donna... buonasera... noi mangiamo una mela.. hey, we're 5% fluent!While you can absolutely get around Italy without knowing a lick of the language, you'll feel more comfortable, be significantly less confused, and the locals will be more appreciative if you do know a few phrases (definitely know these ones!) Plus, what better way to get geared up and excited about your upcoming trip than to fully immerse yourself in the language? You'll feel amazing after flawlessly ordering a bottle of house wine in the local tongue, or directing your cab driver with gusto. That said, it's hard to learn the language when you're not in a class - just reading phrases out of a book doesn't stick.The solution? Duolingo!It's a totally free language-learning app, and you can go from clueless to fluent by just spending 5 minutes a day with fully interactive lessons (or 20 minutes a day if you want to go for "insane" mode!). And let us preface this by saying we are not at all sponsored by Duolingo - just excited about it! We really love the feature of being able to speak into the microphone and get graded on our pronunciation and word choice... it's like a real class, but fun!Don't think you'll end up committing? Don't worry, Duolingo will send you casual reminders that it's time to get your daily lesson on. You'll be vacation-ready in no time! Once you're fluent in Italian, you can go on to learn any of the other 20+ languages the app has. And really, when you think about it, what better final exam to your language lessons than to go on a vacation to test what you've learned? We're really just being good students!
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