The Italian reading room
Where to start reading in Italian
«Easy Italian stories» usually means one of two things: something written down to a learner, or a classic recommended with nothing to say how hard it is. This is neither. It is the sequence in which the Italian room takes eight unaltered tales, with a counted price beside each.
How a tale is priced
By what it adds, never by how long it runs. The price of a tale is its new dictionary words — the vocabulary it uses that no earlier tale in the sequence used. Inflected shapes do not count twice: «andò» and «andava» are both andare, paid for on first meeting. So a long tale can be cheap, and on this shelf one is.
Why the price falls, and then rises
On the Spanish room's shelf, eight tales by one author, the price of a step falls the whole way; on the French room's, two authors, it holds roughly level. This shelf has four authors and does neither: a step costs anything from 168 to 356 new words.
Capuana's four fairy tales pay one another back. In the order the room reads them they cost 284, 213, 209, 168 new words — each cheaper than the one before, and the last of them, «Ranocchino», is the cheapest step on the shelf for all its 2,161 words. By then the furniture of a fairy tale is familiar: 38% of the dictionary words in his four come back in another of them.
Then the price rises. The last step, «La giara», is the dearest of all: 356 new words. Of the 813 dictionary words in it, 366 appear in no other author's tale here. De Amicis's two tales cost 251 and 284: only 24% of his words are in both. A cavalry patrol, a household short of money and a Sicilian farm do not share a vocabulary the way fairy tales do. That is not a flaw in the order; it is the shelf leaving the fairy tale behind, and it is better met knowing it is coming.
The order, and what each step costs
| # | Tale | In English | By | New words | Words held by the end | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cappuccetto Rosso free | Little Red Riding Hood | Collodi | 224 | 224 | 741 |
| 2 | Le arance d’oro first scene free | The Golden Oranges | Capuana | 284 | 508 | 1,794 |
| 3 | La piccola vedetta lombarda | The Little Lombard Lookout | De Amicis | 251 | 759 | 1,353 |
| 4 | L’uovo nero | The Black Egg | Capuana | 213 | 972 | 1,943 |
| 5 | Spera di sole | Sunbeam | Capuana | 209 | 1,181 | 2,115 |
| 6 | Ranocchino | Little Frog | Capuana | 168 | 1,349 | 2,161 |
| 7 | Il piccolo scrivano fiorentino | The Little Florentine Scribe | De Amicis | 284 | 1,633 | 2,422 |
| 8 | La giara | The Oil Jar | Pirandello | 356 | 1,989 | 3,153 |
Words held by the end adds the prices up: a reader who reaches the bottom row has met 1,989 dictionary words. Of the 2,015 the shelf uses, names included, 730 (36%) occur in at least two tales.
Start here
Cappuccetto Rosso — Little Red Riding Hood
Open to anyone, start to finish, without signing up — glossed throughout, English beneath each line. Its price is 224 dictionary words, all of them new, since nothing comes before it; at 741 words no tale here is shorter. It is Collodi's Italian of Charles Perrault's tale, 1875: a story you already know, which is the best help a first text can give. Its sentences are longer than the fairy tales that follow — 15.4 words each against 8.3 — so take it slowly and let the glosses carry it.
Le arance d’oro — The Golden Oranges
After «Cappuccetto Rosso», 284 of its words are new. Its opening scene is free, with no account.
How far the shelf carries you
| Band | Exam | Words | Of this shelf it opens | What it reads |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | CILS A1 | 750 | 39.5% | Whole sentences, and the shape of the language. |
| A2 | CILS A2 | 1,500 | 84.5% | Ordinary narration: who did what, to whom, when. |
Read those counts as a measure of this shelf, not as what the CILS or the CELI requires. Neither the Università per Stranieri di Siena, which sets the CILS, nor the Università per Stranieri di Perugia, which sets the CELI, publishes a counted word list for its levels, and every «A2 means 1,500 words» you will find is somebody's estimate. The exams named are real; the thresholds beside them are this house's working figures. B1 lies past the end of these eight: between them they hold 2,015 distinct words, which passes this house's A2 figure of 1,500 and stops short of its B1 figure of 2,500. Sit the exam when the reading feels easy.
None of this is an entrance exam
The prices are for choosing between tales, not for deciding whether you are allowed in. Inside the room the vocabulary comes to you in the act of reading: touch a word and its dictionary form and meaning appear; touch the line and its English does.
Open the Italian room «Cappuccetto Rosso» is free and entire, and no account is asked for it.
All eight tales · Carlo Collodi · Luigi Capuana · Edmondo De Amicis · Luigi Pirandello · the shelf, counted