The Italian reading room
Can you learn Italian by reading?
You can, and people do — but only where two things hold that usually do not. An unfamiliar word must be cheap to resolve, or you stop reading and start looking things up. And the texts must bring their words round again, or what you resolved on Monday has gone by Friday. Neither is a matter of taste. Both can be measured on a shelf, and this page measures them on eight Italian tales — where the second proves to hang on whose tales they are.
What a dictionary at your elbow costs
920 of 2,015 distinct words on these eight tales — 46% — are printed exactly once. Each of them is a halt. Leave the page for a dictionary and the thread of the paragraph is lost by the time you return; and a word fetched that way, seen nowhere else, does not stay.
Do the words return? That hangs on the author
A language is picked up from print by running into its vocabulary over and over in fresh surroundings. Taking all eight tales together, 730 of 2,015 dictionary words (36%) appear in more than one tale. Inside one writer's work the figure moves: among Capuana's four fairy tales 38% of the vocabulary turns up in at least a second tale, whereas De Amicis's two have just 24% in common. Besides, each writer owns vocabulary the remaining three never touch:
| Author | Tales | Dictionary words | Also in another author's tale | In nobody else's |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carlo Collodi | 1 | 226 | 172 | 54 |
| Luigi Capuana | 4 | 1,113 | 541 | 572 |
| Edmondo De Amicis | 2 | 879 | 462 | 417 |
| Luigi Pirandello | 1 | 813 | 447 | 366 |
Which is why sequence counts
Fairy tales prop each other up, so the room places «Il piccolo scrivano fiorentino» and «La giara» at the very end, where their unfamiliar vocabulary lands on a reader already in the habit. This is the bill, tale by tale, in vocabulary not yet encountered:
| # | Tale | By | New words it asks | Words held by the end |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cappuccetto Rosso | Collodi | 224 | 224 |
| 2 | Le arance d’oro | Capuana | 284 | 508 |
| 3 | La piccola vedetta lombarda | De Amicis | 251 | 759 |
| 4 | L’uovo nero | Capuana | 213 | 972 |
| 5 | Spera di sole | Capuana | 209 | 1181 |
| 6 | Ranocchino | Capuana | 168 | 1349 |
| 7 | Il piccolo scrivano fiorentino | De Amicis | 284 | 1633 |
| 8 | La giara | Pirandello | 356 | 1989 |
What print alone leaves undone
Nobody learned to talk by turning pages, and verb endings are not fixed in place by stories. The gift of reading lies elsewhere — a large vocabulary and an instinct for how a sentence is built, acquired while you are busy wanting to know what happens next. Pleasure is what keeps a learner at it across the years the job takes.
The two conditions, in this room
Cheap to resolve: throughout the reading room a tap on any word gives its dictionary form and its meaning without leaving the line, while the English waits beneath until called for. Brought round again: the tales come in a sequence whose every stage is priced, set out stage by stage in the reading order.
«Cappuccetto Rosso» is 741 words, open entire with no account — one evening settles whether the method suits you. How much vocabulary it really takes is worked out from the same eight tales.