Intermediate 1 in Italian in 32 days!

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As of today (Dec 19th 2025) I’m now Intermediate 1 level in Italian on LingQ, which is roughly equivalent to B1. In my experience with other languages B1 is similar to elementary school graduate level, and is the level that many countries require as a minimum for citizenship by naturalization.

I started on Nov 8th 2025, it’s now Dec 19th 2025. That would mean 42 days, except I skipped 10 days completely, so I got from 0 to Intermediate 1 in 32 days of usage. I am not taking any classes or anything outside of LingQ yet.

Currently I’m reading Animal Farm by George Orwell in Italian and am on chapter 4. I’ve also read several news articles, some random blurbs about history, and other stuff I can’t remember.

As for TV, I’ve finished watching the movies (and importing the subtitles into LingQ) of The Sicilian Connection, Zootopia 1, and 8 episodes (around 52 min each) of The Man in the High Castle. The Sicilian Connection was the easiest, and The Man in the High Castle has been second easiest for most of its episodes. Note that these are shows for adults.

I first began my studies with finding text that had the most words in common with English. This turned out to be news articles for Italian adults written about American political events. Then I started struggling through fiction and other types of texts, which had less words in common with English.

Now as part of my daily schedule, I will read/watch one thing I was doing previously, such as another TV episode in a series. Then I will find a few short texts, maybe just 200 words, on a random topic with the highest percentage of unknown words I can find. I read them just to add a bunch more LingQs. Then I go back to the TV show, novel or whatever I was doing before, which has a lower percentage of new words per piece.

If a word is the name of a person, or exactly the same as in English, or in a foreign language, etc, I hit the ignore button so it doesn’t mess up my count.

As of right now my total stats for Italian, all time, are:

Known words - 8,671
Words until Intermediate 2 - 8,609
Reading - 103,124 words
Listening - 10.53 hours
LingQs Created - 5,762
LingQs Learned - 399
Speaking - 0
Writing - 84 (I only tried this once, with LingQ’s AI chatbot)

Study Time - 44:29 hours (not sure how they count this, I have left the window open on my computer and stepped away several times. I also use LingQ on my phone.)
Reading Speed - began at 7, it is now 39.

Lessons Completed - 96
Lessons Taken - 312
Lessons Imported - 229 (this stat is useless, it splits up one file into multiple “lessons”)
Translations used - 11,694
Translations shared - 6,076

Days Actually Used LingQ For Italian - (all time = between Nov 8th & Dec 19th 2025) - 32

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Mamma mia! Che traguardo!

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Update - Today I reached Intermediate 2 in 63 more days of usage!

As of right now my total stats for Italian, all time, are:

Known Words - was 8,671 at Intermediate 1 / is now 17,285 at Intermediate 2
Known Words until Advanced 1 - 12,595
Words Read - was 103,124 / now 337,735
Listening - was 10.53 hours / now 10.74 (yeah I haven’t been doing this at all…)
LingQs Created - was 5,762 / now 13,691
LingQs Learned - was 399 / now 1,720
Speaking - 0 / same
Writing - 84 / same

Study Time - was 44:29 hours / now 94:00 hours
Reading Speed - began at 7 / was 39 / now 60

Lessons Completed - was 96 / now 202
Lessons Taken - was 312 / now 466
Lessons Imported - was 229 / now 317
Translations used - was 11,694 / now 62,091
Translations shared - was 6,076 / now 19,169

Days Actually Used LingQ For Italian -

From 0 to Intermediate 1 was Nov. 8th to Dec. 19th 2025, which is 42 calendar days, but I only used LingQ on 32 days.

From Intermediate 1 to Intermediate 2 was Dec. 19th 2025 - Mar. 28 2026, which is 100 calendar days, but I only used LingQ on 63 days.

This means, total, it took me 95 days of LingQ usage to go from 0 to reach Intermediate 2 in Italian.

Surprisingly, I have been using LingQ the most on the days where I have a full day of work. I use it right after waking up before breakfast, use it during my lunch break, and after work I get so tired I just have dinner and go lay in bed and use LingQ until I fall asleep.

Until now, I have read or tried reading, in Italian:

  • Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series, book 1 (Sul destriero immortale - read entirely) and 2 (Attraverso la clessidra - in progress)
  • Fight Club (novel - paused on first chapter)
  • Alice in Wonderland (novel - in progress)
  • Several Edgar Allan Poe stories (read entirely)
  • Cuore by Edmundo de Amicis (in progress)
  • The Godfather novel 1 (read entirely, but didn’t understand well at the time)
  • La difesa di Lužin by Vladimir Nabokov (in progress)
  • Animal Farm by George Orwell (read entirely)
  • Il Primo Giorno a Parigi by Edmondo de Amicis (in progress)
  • Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (read entirely - this was read on my Kobo and I have not yet inputted the book or word count into LingQ)
  • Various random, short news articles
  • Subtitles for 10 episodes of The Man in the High Castle (read entirely, then watched the episodes)
  • Subtitles for the movie Zootropolis / Zootopia (read entirely, then watched the movie)
  • Subtitles for the movie Afyon oppio (and watched the movie)
  • A few hours of the videogame The Sims Castaway
  • A few hours of the videogame Bokutai 1 or 2

Of these, Piers Anthony and George Orwell have been the easiest to read. I did sometimes have to look at sentence translations but it has been very rare. Alice in Wonderland is quite easy now, after having finished the first Piers Anthony novel, but it was originally too difficult for me. I am also familiar with Alice in English, otherwise it might be much more difficult.

Edgar Allan Poe is hit or miss. I just read the Black Cat one and it was a pretty easy read, but a previous Poe story I tried was pretty difficult.

Cuore is quite easy in terms of language, however I am still running into some difficulties because some things are dependent on cultural context I have no clue about.

The Godfather and Fight Club were too difficult, I tried those before the Piers Anthony novels and I haven’t tried them again yet.

Luzhin’s Defense has a lot of diverse vocabulary, but I am already familiar with the story in English and it is nowhere near as difficult as I had expected.

I have NOT done almost any of the LingQ Beginner’s stories, have not looked at any textbooks for Italian, do not have a tutor, am not taking courses, or anything like that. I am pretty much just doing LingQ right now.

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