First Italian words for toddlers: 75 to start with.

Start with what they can see

Research on early words gives a family adding Italian a place to begin. A study that asked mothers of twenty-month-olds in seven countries, Italy among them, to fill in matching word checklists found that in every language, names for things made up the biggest share of children’s words, except among children just starting to talk.¹

Italian toddlers add a warm twist. A study of 386 Italian and 1,001 American children aged eighteen to thirty months found that names for things, action and describing words, and small grammar words grew in much the same way in both languages. The Italian children had a somewhat larger share of social words, though: names for people, sound effects and little routines, especially while they knew fewer than two hundred words. The authors suspected a family reason: Italian families often lived in the same city as their relatives, so there were more people to name and more of them to play the little games.² So mamma, papà, the cat and the milk make a good start, with a ciao for whoever comes through the door.

Words in both languages count. Bilingual children are no more likely than other children to have trouble with language, and with both languages counted together they know about as many words as children learning one.³ An evaluation should look at every language a child uses,^{3, 4} and the standard parent word checklist has an Italian version, Il Primo Vocabolario del Bambino, whose words-and-sentences form has Italian norms for children aged eighteen to thirty-six months, so a check can happen in Italian too.⁵ The bilingual toddler guide explains more.

How Italian sounds

Italian is spelled much as it sounds, so once a few patterns are familiar, most cards can be read aloud. In standard Italian every vowel is said, the last one included: cane is two syllables, KAH-neh, and latte is LAHT-teh. The native voice is the best guide. A few things to listen for:

• Five vowel letters, seven vowel sounds. a, i and u are roughly the vowels in “father”, “machine” and “rule”. e sits near “bed” or “day”, and o near “more” or “go”, without the glide English adds at the end. In a stressed syllable each comes open or closed, which makes seven sounds in all: the o of cuore is open, the o of fiore closed. Regions differ on which is which, so a grandparent may say a word a little differently from the card.⁶
• Double letters, held longer. Words like gatto, palla and mamma hold the doubled consonant a beat, and the length can change the meaning:⁷ nonno is grandpa, while nono means ninth.
• Hard and soft c and g. Before a, o or u they are hard, as in cane, cuore and gatto. Before e or i they soften to “ch” and “j”: cucina is “coo-CHEE-na” and mangiare is “man-JAH-reh”. An h keeps them hard, so macchina is “MAHK-kee-na”; on its own, h is silent, as in Ho finito.
• gn, gli, sc and z. gn is the “ny” in “canyon”: montagna. gli is close to the “lli” in “million”: orgoglioso, Ti voglio bene. sc is “sh” before e or i, so scienziata starts “shen-”, and “sk” otherwise, as in scarpa. z is “ts” or “dz”: pizza, and zoo, which is two syllables, DZOH-oh.
• A tapped or rolled r. The tip of the tongue flicks once, like the quick tt in an American “butter”, or rolls, as in treno and fiore, and a double rr rolls longer, as in arrampicarsi.⁷
• Stress near the end. Most Italian words stress the second-to-last syllable: PAHL-lah, GAHT-toh, MAH-noh.⁸ When the last syllable takes the stress, a written accent shows it: papà, bebè, iglù.⁹ It matters: papa, stressed on the first syllable, is the pope. Some words stress earlier with no mark, such as macchina and albero. The same letters can even make two words: the ancora of Ancora, per favore is ahn-KOH-rah, while AHN-koh-rah is an anchor.⁸

The 75 words

These are the free words from Their First Words in Italian, in the three stages the app uses. Every word has two native voices, a woman’s and a man’s, so you can hear it before trying it yourself. Action words are in their dictionary form, such as mangiare and saltare; in a sentence the ending changes. Describing words follow who they describe: the card says emozionato and orgoglioso, and about a girl they become emozionata and orgogliosa; the scientist on the card is a woman, so it says scienziata. The same 75, plus 35 everyday phrases, are also free printable Italian flashcards, with English as an optional second language.

First Words 0–24 months · 25 words

Growing Words 2–3 years · 25 words

Word Builder 3–5 years · 25 words

The little word in front

Every Italian noun is masculine or feminine. Most words ending in -o are masculine, most ending in -a are feminine, and those ending in -e can be either: il cane, but la nave. The cards show the word on its own; in a sentence, Italian adds il or la for “the” and un or una for “a”. For the five to try, that is il latte, la mamma, il papà, la palla and il gatto, or un gatto and una palla.

A few words go their own way: mano ends in -o but is feminine, which is why a parent says Dammi la mano. Some take other forms of “the”: l’albero, lo zoo, gli occhiali da sole. In the plural, -o usually becomes -i and -a becomes -e: due gatti, due palle. A slipped article is part of learning, for you and for your child.

Tu, family words and baby talk

Italian has two ways to say “you” to one person. A child uses tu, the familiar one, with parents and family; Lei, the polite form for less familiar grown-ups, can wait. Italian usually leaves the word tu unsaid, so in the lines marked tu below it shows in vuoi, dammi, dormi and the ti of Ti voglio bene. All eight are free:

The “I love you” card says Ti voglio bene, what a parent says to a child and a child says back; ti amo is for partners.

The everyday words for parents are mamma and papà, and the grandparents are nonna and nonno. In Tuscany, many families say babbo for dad; all of Italy knows the word from Babbo Natale, Santa Claus. Italian also loves a fond little ending: orsacchiotto, the teddy bear card, is orso (bear) made small, and a kitten is a gattino, a little gatto. At the curb, Dammi la mano often becomes Dammi la manina, the little hand. Baby talk has its own words: la pappa for a meal, la nanna for sleep, la bua for a boo-boo.

Using them in an ordinary day

A few Italian words can fit into a routine you already have. Here is what that might sound like:

• Breakfast: latte (milk), banana, cucchiaio (spoon), Ancora, per favore (more, please) when the bowl is empty, and Ho finito (all done) at the end. The mealtime guide walks through exactly this.
• Getting dressed: scarpa (shoe), mano (hand), and finito (done) when the shoes are on.
• The park: parco (park), albero (tree), fiore (flower), anatra (duck), cane (dog), palla (ball).
• Bedtime: orsacchiotto (teddy bear), abbracciare (hug), and Buonanotte, dormi bene (good night, sleep tight) at lights-out.

Your child’s interest gives you an opening: “gatto” when they spot a cat, then a few seconds for a reply.¹⁰ A point, a sound or “cat” keeps the exchange going; you can answer with the Italian word again. The two-language card routine shows how that can work with a picture beside the real meal.

Nonna, Saturday school and the parent who chose Italian

For many families, the grandparents are the reason: a child who can talk to nonna and nonno. A video call goes better when a toddler has something to say on cue: Ti voglio bene (I love you), Grazie (thank you), or Questa è la mia mamma (this is my mommy) when Mom leans into the frame. A week of saying them at bedtime gives Sunday’s call somewhere to start, whether the call goes home to Palermo or to the next state.

If the Italian in your family came over with grandparents or great-grandparents, it may have been Sicilian, Neapolitan or another regional language rather than the standard Italian on these cards. Italy’s dialects are still widely spoken: in a 2015 national survey, about a third of people in Italy aged six and over used both Italian and a dialect with their family, and 14% mostly a dialect.¹¹ In parts of the south, the last vowel of a word often fades to a soft “uh”, one reason a family word can sound clipped beside the card.⁶ The cards use standard Italian, the Italian of school; a great-grandmother’s word can sit right beside it. Both belong to your family.

Saturday Italian school or a bilingual preschool gives the words more places to live, and more speakers mean more of the day in Italian. In a study of twenty-nine Spanish–English two-year-olds, the share of the day each language filled predicted the child’s vocabulary in it, and for English, so did the number of different people the child heard it from.¹² A teacher, a grandparent and a family friend each add time in Italian and another voice. A minute with four cards at breakfast is not homework.

When only one parent speaks Italian, the home language has fewer voices. In a survey of 1,899 families with children aged six to ten, in which at least one parent spoke a minority language, the best odds of a child speaking it came when both parents used it and no more than one also spoke the community language; “one parent, one language” was neither necessary nor sufficient.¹³ In a mixed home, the Italian speaker’s minutes, and the grandparents’, carry more of the weight. The other parent does not need to switch; the AAP’s advice is to use the language you are most comfortable with.⁴ Knowing mamma, papà and Ancora, per favore well enough to answer them is a warm way to join in.

And if neither of you grew up with Italian and you chose it anyway, for a partner’s family or for love of the language, our guide to teaching a language you don’t speak covers what the research says. If your own Italian went quiet after childhood, you are far from alone: home languages are more likely than the community language to fade as children grow.³ The native voices on this page give you the word to borrow.

Paper, app, or both

The printable cards are free, with no sign-up, and can live on the fridge or beside a favorite book. The app starts with the same free words and phrases: the picture, the written word and a woman’s and a man’s native voice on every card, so the word is ready before the moment arrives. It has no ads and works offline; one $9.99 purchase opens the rest of the 1,000+ words and 500+ phrases, in all eight languages. Both are there for the word; the conversation over breakfast is yours. Neither is a treatment for language delay. The same 75 words in Spanish, with their own sound notes, are in our first Spanish words guide. You can come back to this page whenever you want to hear a word again.