How to learn basic language skills

[Katrinawaves]

Please can anyone recommend any resources to learn some basic Italian from a complete standing start? I don’t have a schedule which could accommodate attending a class in person.

The background is that I’m generally quite good at learning new languages- did French and German to A level standard many years ago and have reasonable fluency in both. I don’t speak any Italian currently. We’ve booked an Air BNB in Milan for a month in August and I’d like to pick up a little Italian before then and hopefully then being immersed in the culture will pick up a lot more.

I’ve downloaded Duolingo this evening but I think that will be too basic. Any other recommendations please?

You're probably too late now for the summer term of online live classes, e.g. UCL. Realistically there is a limit to what you can learn by August, although having knowledge of another romance language will help you.

My view is that you're unlikely to learn Italian to be able to make conversation or navigate holiday situations from Duolingo. It's just not very effective for that. If you want to memorise random vocab out of context then Duolingo is great, but for real language learning not so much.

There are various other options. The BBC languages courses are more geared towards holiday language.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/italian/

The ideal would be to be able to talk and interact. You'll learn more. Do you have the budget for a private tutor?

You might find the link below useful. I also studied French and German at school and found Italian relatively easy to pick up. I was working for an Italian-owned company at the time and went out to Italy frequently for work with holidays tagged on. A couple of months of studying at home and I was able to travel, book accommodation, eat out, go shopping etc with no issues. One of the most striking things that I remember is that Italians love it when foreigners make the effort to speak their language, they're very encouraging. Enjoy!

www.theitalianexperiment.com/review

I speak French and Spanish, I began duolingo Italian a month ago paid for the upgrade and been doing it daily. Currently in Italy and I can read notices, have basic interactions in Italian. I have a toddler and people are talking to us!

Duolingo should be fine.
I did 2 months of it before a holiday to Italy and was surprised at how much I knew.
I already spoke a couple of languages and did Latin at school (old) but it was easier than I thought

Duolingo is actually ok,

I speak slightly dodgy French from school and was able to manage perfectly well on a holiday in Spain from Duolingo.

the similarities between French and Italian mean you can razz through the Duolingo and if you do a fair bit each day you get pretty good pretty fast.

i did need to google a couple of grammar points.

Oh I forgot I did Latin at school too and a couple of years of Spanish so maybe this will be easier than I thought.

I'm just looking at Rocket Italian from the link @AcquadiP posted. The BBC 12 week course is unfortunately no longer available. Maybe I could do a combo of Dualingo and Rocket and see how I get on.

Budget would allow a private tutor but unpredictable work schedule means I probably couldn’t make that work as I often get pulled into calls or emails outside my normal working hours.

Try the Michel Thomas method - it's about 10 hours of audiobook, but is completely focussed on speaking and useful phrases rather than the random vocab on Duolingo!

The course is expensive, but it's available on Spotify premium at the moment so you could just sign up for a month

One thing I would say about Michel Thomas is that DH tried to use it to learn French and his accent was so bad he was hard to understand.
MT is/was Czech or similar and so his accent in French is awful, I am sure mine is far from perfect but I am understandable at least.

I couldn't remember earlier the other one I see recommended - Pimsleur:

https://www.pimsleur.com/learn-italian/

There's also Rosetta Stone:

https://uk.rosettastone.com/buy/