The Italian reading room
The Italian words worth learning first
The usual vocabulary list ranks a word by how often it turns up. These rank it by what it lets you finish: the number of whole sentences that become readable once you have it. The measuring was done on the 1,571 sentences of eight tales by Collodi, Capuana, De Amicis and Pirandello. Beside each entry stand its English meaning and the shapes the tales actually print it in.
One list, two percentages
The shortest list, 100 entries, accounts for 41% of all the print on the shelf. It clears 14% of the sentences. Both are true at once, because an unknown word spoils the sentence it sits in and the unknown ones are scattered thinly. Trust the smaller figure: it is the one about reading.
Why the list opens with a cry
Because the order asks one question — which word, learnt next, finishes the most whole sentences — and on this shelf the first answers are words that are a sentence by themselves. The first rung is «chicchirichì» (cock-a-doodle-doo!): on its own it is 9 complete sentences of the shelf. «billi» (chick, chick!) finishes 6 more. A frequency list would never put them first; a reader can read them on the first day.
What Italian does to a word count
Italian drops a vowel before another and marks the place with an apostrophe: «l’uomo», «d’oro», «un po’». These lists split a word at the apostrophe, the way the room does when you tap it. The small words that exist only cut short — «l’», «d’», «dell’» — are entries of their own, printed with their apostrophe; a longer word cut short is counted under its full form, so «po’» is «poco» and «quell’» is «quello». And a verb with a pronoun fastened to its end — «dirgli», «guardarlo» — is the verb, not a new word: it is counted under dire and guardare.
How far the lists go
The whole ladder has 1,989 rungs, drawn from 2,015 dictionary words. Only the first 500 are published as lists; by then 75% of the print is accounted for and the point is made. Beyond lie the rarities, seen once or twice apiece, which nobody studies in advance and which the room explains on the spot when you reach them. The shelf's 26 proper names, such as «Ranocchino» and «Tizzoncino», are left out of the ladder and the lists, because nobody learns a name from a column.
A list is a start, not a method
A column gives you a word bare. A tale gives it to you inside «C’era una volta in un villaggio una bambina, la più carina che si potesse mai vedere.» — and memory holds on to the sentence, bringing the word along. That line opens «Cappuccetto Rosso», which anyone may read through here without an account.
Where to start reading in Italian · the shelf, counted · the same lists for French · for Spanish · and for Russian