Is italian or spanish easier to learn for english speakers

Which to Learn: Spanish or Italian?

At the bottom of the page, I'll make a brief effort to discuss the pros and cons of learning Italian and Spanish. But the focus of this page is really to answer this question:

Which language is easier to learn — Italian, or Spanish?

Note: If you know that you want to learn Italian conjugation, make sure not to miss my amazing deck of free flashcards to learn all of Italian conjugation in a single swoop (a very long swoop).

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Page Index

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TL;DR: Italian is much harder to learn than Spanish

The right thing is to tell the truth
Here is how you say the right thing is to tell the truth in both languages:
✽ Spanish: lo justo es decir la verdad
✽ Italian: quel che è giusto è dire la verità

Which looks easier to you?

Italian's dirty secret: it's really hard. Anything you've heard about Italian being easy is just hype.

Yes, it's relative
How hard a language is to learn depends on several factors, such as which languages you already speak, what resources you have and so on. If you speak Sicilian or Corsican, then sure, for you, Italian will be easier than Spanish.

Update: now that my Italian is at B2 level and that I passed the Spanish C2 exam, I feel qualified to say that Italian is even harder (in comparison to Spanish) than what this page sets out.

Find out for yourself with the "Newspaper Test"
I'll soon get into specifics of what makes Italian so much harder, but if you'd like a fore-taste of how easy or hard the languages may be to you, one idea would be to have a skim of articles on the websites of the major newspapers La Stampa (Italy) and El País (Spain).

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Italian is Messy: forewarned is forearmed

Spanish has been debugged (mostly). Italian is new.
It's hard to overstate the difference in lineage between Spanish and Italian. In a sense, the Spanish language has been "debugged" for over 500 years. The year 1492, when Columbus reached America and Jews were expelled from Spain, also saw the publication of the Gramática de la lengua castellana, which according to Wikipedia was "first grammar of a modern European language to be published". Since then, the language has seen spelling reforms that have rationalized it, and it's been guided by the firm and lucid stewardship of the Spanish Royal Academy (RAE) and the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language.

In contrast, the language we call "Italian" is a toddler which, as a widely spoken language, is only about 150 years old. Quoting from the Wikipedia page about the Italian language,

Italian was adopted by the state after the Unification of Italy, having previously been a literary language.
(…)
Only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak the Italian standardized language properly when the nation was unified in 1861.

Which "Italian" are you learning? Does learning "Italian" mean that you'll understand the locals?
When someone thinks of studying Chinese, they soon learn that they have to pick between Cantonese and Mandarin. With Italian, the situation is not entirely dissimilar. Bear in mind that modern Italian is only one of the 34 languages currently spoken in Italy (many people are bilingual in, say, Italian and Sicilian), and that's not even counting the regional variations. How could you expect anything but a mess?

This also means that if you study modern Italian really hard, you'll make yourself understood wherever you are in the country, but the reverse isn't true: depending on where you are in Italy, there's a good chance that you won't be able to understand the locals!

True, Spain itself has three official languages besides Spanish (Catalan, Basque and Galician), and thick Andalusian accents can be hard to understand for many Spaniards of the north. But Spain is only a small fraction of the Spanish world.

Do the differences on this page really matter?
Taken individually, each of the points below may not constitute a major hurdle when learning the language, although some will take quite some time to overcome. But taken together, they compound into such a mass of rules that the risk of making a mistake in a moderately simple sentence grows exponentially.

This is not a criticism of the language, which I myself intend to learn (I've even made a killer deck of flashcards to master Italian conjugation). Italian is widely praised as being one of the sweetest languages to the ear. And millions of natives manage to speak it, so why shouldn't you? But "forewarned is forearmed". Speaking for myself, I feel that my risk of being disappointed with the study of Italian is a lot less if I have a fairly clear idea of its difficulties at the outset. I hope this page can provide this kind of overview to other beginners.

Using this page to get going with Italian
You're not going to learn detailed Italian grammar on this page, but I hope that you'll encounter some themes that need to be explored at some stage or other of your learning journey. If nothing else, the sections below can serve as a checklist to go deepen your knowledge of certain themes.

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Italian has more Diacritics (é vs è, ó vs ò) and Accentuation is Less Logical

First, while Spanish only has one kind of accentuation — the acute one as in acuático, arcén, agrícolo, acólito, algún — Italian has both the acute and the grave, as in libertà, perché. Twice as many accents, twice as complicated.

Second, Spanish accents are close to one hundred percent logical. In a handful of cases they allow you to distinguish between two words (se vs. sé), but 99.9% of the time they're there to let you know that the tonic stress falls on a non-standard syllable. In other words, they're a pronunciation hint. Useful, right?

In contrast, Italian accentuation rules seem to serve a mishmash of purposes — from the two above to signaling how to pronounce a vowel sound ("open" or "closed"). One of my grammar books has 24 rules just for é and è!

What this means is that in Italian, you can't read out loud a newspaper fragment and be sure that you're pronouncing it correctly. In Spanish you can.

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Italian has More Complex Spelling and Pronunciation

In passing, not a big deal, but Italian has a lot more duplication of consonants than Spanish (avvizzire, babbo). Personally I find that charming, and it's not an impediment to reading. Every Italian consonant can be duplicated, whereas in Spanish you're only worry is the rr. (The Spanish ll is not a duplicated sound but its own letter.)

(I've also heard that in Italian, even in the middle of a word, there can be some doubt as to how to pronounce the single letters z and s, but I'm waiting for someone to give me a good example.)

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Italian has the Apostrophe

✽ l'uomo
✽ gl'italiani
✽ bell'idèa
✽ di' (← dici)
✽ me' (← meglio)

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Use of the Article in front of Famous People's Names

…but only with famous people from the past, and not all of them:
✽ Paganini, Verdi, Rossini…

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Italian has Two Auxiliary Verbs

In Spanish, to say He has changed the text and He has changed, you use the auxiliary haber both times:

✽ Él ha cambiado el texto.
✽ Él ha cambiado.

In Italian, one sentence uses avere, the other uses essere:

✽ Lui ha cambiato il testo.
✽ Lui è cambiato.

There are rules for when to use which, but it's not always that obvious. One complicating element is that what dictates which auxiliary to use is not always the verb immediately following the auxiliary, but the one after. Compare:

✽ Ho dovuto parlare (I had to speak)
✽ Sono dovuto andare (I had to go)

In this example, the choice of the auxiliary is not driven by dovere, but by parlare vs. andare.

That's worse than in French, which has the two equivalent auxiliary verbs être and avoir, but where the choice here would be driven by "have to" and therefore identical: j'ai du parler, j'ai du aller.

Some conjugations can switch auxiliary verb (from avere to essere) when made reflexive:

✽ Ho comprato un gelato → Mi sono comprato un gelato

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With Essere as Auxiliary, Past-Participles have Four Forms

To say the same in Italian, you must select one of four forms for the past-participle:
✽ È venuto (he has come)
✽ È venuta (she has come)
✽ Sono venuti (they have come, masculine)
✽ Sono venute (they have come, feminine)

This is only the case with verbs that use essere as auxiliary. Verbs that use avere have their own mess.

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With Avere and Direct Objects, Past-Participles have Four Forms

In Italian, you need four:
✽ I had bought it (masculine object) → Lo avevo | l'avevo comprato.
✽ I had bought it (feminine object) → La avevo | l'avevo comprata.
✽ I had bought them (masculine objects) → Li avevo comprati.
✽ I had bought them (feminine objects) → Le avevo comprate.

It's even more confusing than you think
Sure, this sounds similar to the case above where Essere is the auxiliary. But note that in the former case, the past participle is declined depending on the gender and number of the subject (in "I have come", is the "I" a man or a woman?) In contrast, in the case of "I had bought it", the past participle is not declined depending on the gender and number of the "I", but of the "it", the object.

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More Conjugations for There is, There was etc.

In Italian, you have more forms:
✽ Hay → c'è | v'è, ci sono | vi sono
✽ Hubo → ci fu | vi fu, ci furono | vi furono
✽ Había → c'era | v'era, c'erano | v'erano
✽ Habrá → ci sarà | vi sarà, ci saranno | vi saranno
✽ Habría → ci sarebbe | vi sarebbe, ci sarebbero | vi sarebbero

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Italian has More Definite Articles

Welcome to Italian, where you have to choose between three masculine singular articles and two feminine singular articles depending on the letters composing the beginning of the following word. These give rise to three plural forms (two for the masculine, one for the feminine).

The point is not so much that you have a total of eight definite articles instead of four. What's four extra words, after all? The point is that you have to decide which one to use. With Spanish, there is no doubt.

✽ Masculine singular: il periodo, lo stesso periodo, l'albero
✽ Feminine singular: la casa, l'isola
✽ Masculine plural: i nostri amici, gli amici
✽ Feminine plural: le case

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Italian has More Indefinite Articles

In Italian, you have to choose between two indefinite articles for either gender.

✽ Masculine singular: un periodo, uno stesso periodo
✽ Feminine singular: una casa, un'isola
✽ Masculine plural: dei ragazzi, degli studenti
✽ Feminine plural: delle case

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Italian has no Neutral Article

✽ lo bueno → il buono, ciò che è buono, le cose buone, …
✽ lo dicho → ciò che s'è detto, quanto detto, ciò che è stato detto, …
✽ lo justo es decir la verdad → quel che è giusto è dire la verità

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Italian has More Contractions with the Definite Articles

Sure there are more contractions in the spoken language, as with any language. There are also a few obsolete ones, such as col (con el).

But if you're reading modern Spanish, as far as contractions go, if you know del and al, you're covered.

In contrast, Italian seems to have an infinite number of contractions. In this section we'll just look at the ones involving definite articles, the del and al category of Spanish. In this category, Italian has 37 according to one of my grammar books. The list below "multiplies" prepositions such as di with the seven definite articles il, lo, l', la, i, gli and le.

✽ with di: del, dello, dell', della, dei, degli, delle
✽ with a: al, allo, all', alla, ai, agli, alle
✽ with da: dal, dallo, dall', dalla, dai, dagli, dalle
✽ with in: nel, nello, nell', nella, nei, negli, nelle
✽ with su: sul, sullo, sull', sulla, sui, sugli, sulle
✽ with con: con + il → col, con + i → coi and rarely collo, cogli, colla, colle
✽ with per (rare): per + il → pel, per + i → pei
✽ with tra and fra (rare): trai, frai, tra 'l, fra 'l

Note that sometimes, whether or not to contract is a matter of style.

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Abbreviated Infinitive Form

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Italian Agglutinates (and contracts at the same time)

In my limited experience, the Italian written language loves to contract and agglutinate, which for me as a beginner is a nightmare. It gives rise to monstrosities such as:

✽ Gliel'ho fatto pagare (I made him pay for it). Compare with Se lo he hecho pagar.

Spanish has very few words that can contract. For instance:
✽ bueno → un buen día

In contrast, Italian seems to have an infinity, and of all kinds (verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns…)
✽ amore → amor divino
✽ ancora → ancor domani
✽ mi → m'invita
✽ the examples are infinite.

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Italian Expands (adding vowels just because it sounds good)

✽ in Svízzera → in Isvízzera
✽ per sbaglio → per isbaglio

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Italian has Seven Partitive Articles, Spanish Zero

✽ Italian: comprai del burro e della marmellata.
✽ Spanish: compré mantequilla y mermelada. (No messing with the likes of del and della.)

The Italian partitive articles del and della above are part of a collection:

✽ del, dello, dell', della (singular)
✽ dei, degli, delle (plural)

Often they can be omitted or substituted by other turns of phrase, but in general they're not there to make your life easier.

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The Plural of Nouns is More Complex

What this means is that you'll have to memorize the plural form of dozens of nouns.

✽ la pera → le pere
✽ il problema → i problemi
✽ il duca → i duchi
✽ la chiave → le chiavi
✽ il sogno → i sogni
✽ la rosa → le rose
✽ il riso → le risa
✽ la toga → le toghe
✽ il membro → le membra or i membri
✽ la fallacia → le fallacie, but la frangia → le frange
✽ il bacio → i baci, but l'addio → gli addii

For words that have the same masculine and feminine forms, the additional complexity of Italian is even more apparent:

✽ el turista, la turista → il turista, la turista (equivalent)
✽ los turistas, las turistas → i turisti, le turiste (much more complex)

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The Feminine of Nouns is Less Regular

But some Italian nouns have several feminine forms:
✽ il lavoratore (el trabajador) → la lavoratora, la lavoratrice
✽ il traditore (el traidor) → la traditora, la traditrice

Some Italian nouns make it more complicated than their Spanish equivalent:
✽ el defensor, la defensora → il difensore, la difenditrice

Many Italian nouns have ambiguous genders (as with arte in Spanish).

Some nouns change gender in the plural:
✽ el huevo, los huevos → l'uovo, le uova

And many nouns have both genders in the plural with different meanings — figurative in the masculine and literal in the feminine:
✽ il braccio (the arm) → i bracci (of a river), le braccia (of a body)
✽ il cervello (the brain) → i cervelli (of a gang), le cervella (of the body)

Some nouns have both genders in the plural — the masculine being common, the feminine being literary:
✽ il castello → il castelli, le castella
✽ il pugno → il pugni, le pugna

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Italian Comparison Rules are More Complex

✽ Luís es menos studioso que Mario → Luigi è meno studioso di Mario
✽ but Luís es menos studioso que inteligente → Luigi è meno studioso che intelligente

In these forms of comparison, the two languages agree:
✽ ha gastado más de cinco euros → ha speso più di cinque euros
✽ es más difícil de lo que crees → è più dificile di quel che credi (although Italian adds this option: è più dificile che non credi)

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The Italian Possessive has more Exceptions

✽ mi libro → il mio libro, il libro mio
✽ su culpa → la sua colpa, la colpa sua
✽ mis cartas → le mie lèttere, le lèttere mie

But there are exceptions (family members, titles of nobility):

✽ mi hijo → mio figlio
✽ tu hermano → tuo fratello
✽ vuestra alteza → vostra altezza
✽ vi a Julio, tu amigo, en Nápoles → ho visto a Guilio, tuo amico, a Napoli

And exceptions to the exceptions:
✽ su tío → il loro zio
✽ su madre → la loro madre
✽ tus hermanos → i tuoi fratelli
✽ tu hermanita → la tua sorellina

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Italian has More Demonstrative Adjectives

In Italian, once again, you need to choose depending on the letters composing the beginning of the following word.

✽ Masculine singular: quel periodo, quello stesso periodo, quell'albero
✽ Feminine singular: quella casa, quell'isola
✽ Masculine plural: quei monarchi, quegli amici
✽ Feminine plural: quelle chiavi

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Italian has More Irregular Past Participles — and they are Less Regular

Note: If you know that you want to learn Italian conjugation, make sure not to miss my amazing deck of free flashcards to learn all of Italian conjugation in a single swoop (a very long swoop).

Spanish Irregular Participles are Still Regular
Spanish past participles are astonishingly regular. There are a few exceptions (such as impreso and imprimido, which are alternate past participles for imprimir), but those add up to a small list that you might be able to memorize in one sitting.

Indeed, Spanish participles are extremely regular in their irregularity. Of the 200 or so irregular past-participles, 35 follow the poner→puesto pattern (componer→compuesto). The decir→dicho pattern covers 13, ten for ver→visto, nine for volver→vuelto, four each for hacer→hecho and cubrir→cubierto... and you are well on your way.

Not venito, but venuto, not insistuto but insistito
In contrast, the construction of Italian past participles is sometimes screwy for a beginner. For instance, verbs that end in -ire, such as finire, normally have a past-participle in -ito, such as finito. So what do they do with venire? They give it the past-participle venuto, using the -uto termination that is normally reserved for verbs that end in -ere, such as credere.

In a similar vein, it's not insistuto, but insistito, constitito, esistito.

I suppose that if you're enamored with Italian this doesn't matter: learning all those irregularities is a labor of love.

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Ecco

✽ Ecco il tuo professore → He aquí a tu profesor
✽ Ecco i vostri documenti → He ahí vuestros documentos
✽ Èccomi → Aquí estoy
✽ Èccolo → Helo aquì pronto
✽ Èccoli → Vienen juntos
✽ Ecco fatto → Ya está hecho
✽ Ecco arrivato → Acaba de llegar

I suppose Spanish has its own throw-around words with multiple meanings — ya comes to mind.

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Ne

Ne more or less means "of it" as in "one of it", "some of it"
There is no direct word to translate ne in English or Spanish: it's a nuisance, unless you know French, in which case you'll love it! (Translate it with en as in j'en veux → ne voglio.)

✽ Ne ho mangiato : I ate some of it.
✽ Gliene ho parlato : I talked to them about it (with agglutination to boot!)
✽ Cosa ne pensi? : What do you think of it?
✽ La vide e ne fece il ritratto: He saw her and made her portrait [i.e., the portrait of her]
✽ Non me ne ricordo: I don't remember [of it]

Some uses of Ne are harder to translate:
✽ Se ne va tardi: it's getting late | (s)he's getting late
✽ Me ne sto solo: I'm left alone | I'm alone
✽ Te ne parti tranquilo: leave without worrying
✽ È ora che te ne ritorni a casa: it's time that you go home

The last two cases work in literary or "peasant" French: va-t-en tranquille, il est temps que tu t'en retournes chez toi.

Ne can be abbreviated:
✽ Te n'andavi pian piano (you were going very slow)

To make things messier, Ne can be agglutinated:
✽ Danne un po' ai pòveri (give a bit of it to the poor)
✽ Fanne almeno tre (do at least three of them)
✽ Dinne i nomi (tell the names of them)
✽ Ricòrdatene (remember of it)
✽ Il suo scopo era di andàrsene (his purpose was to go)
✽ Èccone il commento (here is his comment)

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The double lives of Ci and Vi

1. Ci and Vi can mean "there"
If you know French, the strange place of this "there" is familiar as the Y: Je m'y rends.

✽ Mi ci reco → I'm going there
✽ Ti ci porta → He's taking you there
✽ Ci sono altre ragioni → There are other reasons
✽ Vi hanno piantato rose → You've planted roses there

In the context of Spanish, these constructions are strange — you'd use aquí, allí, … as usual, as in se fue allí or me llevó allí.

2. Ci and Vi can mean "us" (nos) and "you" (os)
✽ Ci vedono → nos ven (they see us)
✽ Ci risolve il problema → nos resuelve el problema (that solves the problem for us)
✽ Vi chiamerà → os llamará

Have fun disentangling those:
✽ Ci vi troviamo (we find ourselves there… I think.)
✽ Vi ci trovate (you find yourselves there… I think.)

But don't worry about Ciò
Don't go looking for a Ci in Ciò, translate it with that (ello, esto, lo que in Spanish):
✽ Ciò è giusto: that is fair
✽ Fa' ciò che ti dico: do that which I tell you

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Peculiarities of the Passive Voice

From what I'm reading, the passive voice seems more common in Italian, although similar alternate constructions can be found. However, two passive Italian constructions that I came across would look odd in Spanish. They use the verbs andare and venire, as in:

✽ il tagliando auto va fatto ogni anno → el control técnico se hace cada año
✽ la finestra viene chiusa → la ventana está cerrada

To be sure, in turn Spanish uses the equivalent verbs ir and venir in similar-looking constructions, but with the gerund:
✽ iba practicando cada vez que podía
✽ vengo pensándolo desde hace meses

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Di and Da

Here are two resources which may or may not render in your browser, so I won't linkify them.

✽ https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/2887134/When-to-use-di-or-da-in-Italian
✽ http://www.scudit.net/mddagram.htm

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Negative Verbs that Start with an S

Here are a few examples where when I first hear the word or phrase, I tend to understand the opposite.

✽ Sbarcare: to disembark
✽ Sbottonare: to unbutton
✽ Sbloccare: to unblock
✽ Scarcerare: to release from prison
✽ Scolorire: to discolor
✽ Scomodare: to disturb
✽ Scomparire: to disappear
✽ Sconcertare: to disconcert
✽ Sconfinare: to trespass
✽ Sconfortare: to dishearten
✽ Scongelare: to defrost
✽ Sconnettere: to disconnect
✽ È possibile salire, cosa che sconsiglio: It's possible to climb, which I advise against
✽ Scoraggiare: to discourage
✽ Screditare: to discredit
✽ Sfigurare: to disfigure
✽ Sfilare: to unthread
✽ Sfiorire: to wither
✽ Sfornare: to remove from the oven
✽ Sgonfiare: to deflate
✽ Sgrassare: to degrease
✽ Sguarnire: to dismantle
✽ Sloggiare: to dislodge
✽ Smontare: to disassemble
✽ Snazionalizzare: to denationalize
✽ Snodare: to untie ("deknot")
✽ Sparire: to disappear
✽ Sparlare: to badmouth
✽ Spiacere: to displease
✽ Spostarse: to move
✽ Sprigionare: to release
✽ Squalificare: to disqualify
✽ Stomacare: to disgust
✽ Svalutare: to devalue
✽ Svanire: to vanish
✽ È molto svantaggiato: he's very disadvantaged
✽ Svestire: to undress
✽ Svincolare: to release

You get the pattern, right? After all this, can you guess what smuovere means? Something like "to be still", perhaps to "dis-move"? Wrong. It means to move or shift. In other words, it's a mess.

Not limited to verbs
By the way, the negative s- prefix is not limited to verbs.
✽ svantaggio → disadvantage

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Suffixes gone wild

It's the same in Italian… except that Italian has many more.

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Sentire: Five senses in a single verb

✽ Hai sentito quell'aereo? → Did you hear that airplane?
✽ Sentivo il suo profumo. → I smelled her perfume.
✽ Senti un po' se il vino è buono. → Taste if the wine is good.
✽ Si può sentire che è cuoio. → You can feel by touching that it's leather.
✽ Andammo a sentire "Don Giovanni". → We went to see Don Giovanni.

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Double Pronoun Consonant... Sometimes

✽ Dalle una mano (give her a hand) vs Diamole una mano (let's give her a hand)
✽ Dimmelo (tell me, singular "you") vs Ditemelo (tell me, plural "you")
✽ Fallo (do it, singular "you") vs Fatelo (do it, plural "you")
✽ Vacci (go there, singular "you") vs Andateci (go there, plural "you")

Note that in the third case, the lo is doubled, but in the second it is unchanged while it is the me that is doubled.

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The Concordance of Adjectives is More Complex

✽ un bimbo buono, una bimba buona → dei bimbi buoni, delle bimbe buone (already more complex than bueno, buena → buenos, buenas)
✽ un bimbo felice, una bimba felice → dei bimbi felici, delle bimbe felici
✽ serio → seri but pio → pii

Spelling often changes to preserve sounds (in more cases than Spanish does with the likes of feliz → felices):
✽ simpatico → simpatici but carico → carichi
✽ grigia → grigie but saggia → sagge
✽ identica → identiche, largo → larghi

And how about this triangle:
✽ un bel libro → bei libri
✽ but un bell' anello → begli anelli
✽ but i ricordi belli sono rari

Other special cases abound.

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More options for "a few"

The fact that alcuno can mean ninguno (none) is an added bonus to the overall confusion.

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Abbreviations of Centuries

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The Italian Imperative: More Complex than the Spanish Imperative

Note: If you know that you want to learn Italian conjugation, make sure not to miss my amazing deck of free flashcards to learn all of Italian conjugation in a single swoop (a very long swoop).

Positive Tu / Tú
✽ the tú form of the Spanish imperative is the same as the present él, with at least eight exceptions: saber→sé, ir→ve, decir→di, hacer→haz, tener→ten, venir→ven, poner→pon, salir→sal

✽ Italian distinguishes between verb groups. For verbs in the parlare group, the tu form of the Italian imperative is the same as the present lui: parlare→parla

✽ for other groups, the tu form of the Italian imperative is the same as the present tu, with at least nine exceptions: avere→abbi, essere→sii, sapere→sappi, volere→vogli, andare→va', dare→da', fare→fa', stare→sta', dire→di'. Some of these are options tacked on to the regular form, so that volere→vuoi, andare→vai, dare→dai and stare→stai are also acceptable.

Positive Voi / Vosotros
✽ the vosotros form of the Spanish imperative is regular and is constructed by replacing the final r of the infinitive with a d: sed, venid, comprad...

✽ the voi form of the Italian imperative is the same as the present voi, with four exceptions I'm aware of: avere→abbiate, essere→siate, sapere→sappiate, volere→vogliate

Positive Lui / Él, Noi / Nosotros, Loro / Ellos
✽ the lui, noi, loro forms of the Italian imperative and the él, nosotros, ellos forms of the Spanish imperative are all the respective forms of the subjunctive present.

✽ In the case of Italian the noi form also happens to coincide with the Present tense, if you prefer to look at it that way.

Negative Imperative
✽ Spanish is a bit more consistent: all forms use the subjunctive: no vengas, no venga, no vengamos, no vengáis, no vengan...

✽ Italian distinguishes between the tu forms and the other four. For the tu form, Italian uses the infinitive: non venire. For all other forms, it adds non to the positive imperative (which, itself, is more complex than the Spanish subjunctive): non venga, non veniamo, non venite, non vengano

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Italian has more Irregular Verbs

Note: If you know that you want to learn Italian conjugation, make sure not to miss my amazing deck of free flashcards to learn all of Italian conjugation in a single swoop (a very long swoop).

There are patterns, and personally I find them fun to learn, especially for the passato remoto. But it's still a hurdle.

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Italian has Verbs with Alternate Conjugations

Note: If you know that you want to learn Italian conjugation, make sure not to miss my amazing deck of free flashcards to learn all of Italian conjugation in a single swoop (a very long swoop).

✽ the verb bere has several forms for the passato remoto: bevvi | bevei | bevetti
✽ the verb cuocere has several forms for the imperfetto (among others): cocevo | cuocevo
✽ the verb moriro has several forms for the futuro: morirò | morrò

There are tons of similar cases.

Superabundant verbs
Some verbs, known as sovraabbondanti ('superabundant'), have two forms and therefore two distinct conjugations in all the declinations that differ between these forms. Here are a few such pairs:

✽ ammansare, ammansire
✽ attristare, attristire
✽ colorare, colorire
✽ dimagrare, dimagrire
✽ fallare, fallire
✽ indurare, indurire
✽ rièmpiere, riempire

At this juncture, someone might interject that Spanish has two versions of the subjunctive past. But that's only one tence, and the two versions are entirely regular, with a se | ra option:

✽ I hoped he would speak : Esperaba que hablase | Esperaba que hablara.

One verb, two conjugations, two meanings
A few Italian verbs, like partire, are actually two verbs with different conjugations and meanings.

✽ parto: I leave
✽ partisco: I divide in portions

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Specific Difficulties if You Already Know Spanish

Se and Si are inverted
In Italian, se means if, while si is the reflexive equivalent of oneself in to groom oneself. It's a bummer for Spanish speakers as in Spanish it's the exact opposite.

Cosa is not What you Thing
In Spanish una cosa is "a thing". In Italian cosa means "what", as in What are we eating? : Cosa si mangia?

As a beginner this throws me off.

The future of a few verbs such as venire
The verb venire (to come) sounds a lot like the Spanish venir, and for good reason. In the future tense, though, it takes forms such as verrà, verremo, verranno... For me, that's uncomfortably close to the Spanish verá, veremos, verán, which belong to the verb ver (to see).

alcuno means ninguno
Conveniently, the Spanish algunos (some) can be translated in Italian by alcuni, among other options. Less convenient is the fact that the Italian alcuno is a negative word that means ninguno ("none") in Spanish.

The imperfect is close but not close enough
The imperfect conjugation of first-group verbs (such as comprar in Spanish and comprare in Italian) is similar: "he used to buy" translates into compraba and comprava respectively. Less conveniently, to translate "I used to buy" my instinct is to also reach for comprava (mirroring Spanish conjugation), but the correct form is compravo.

The pronoun cui is confusing
The Italian pronoun cui plays multiple roles for which Spanish has distinct pronouns:
✽ un uomo in cui ho fiducia → en quien
✽ il film di cui ti parlai → de la que (la película)
✽ un uomo la cui reputazione è eccellente → cuya

The position of ago is inverted
In Spanish, "three years ago" is hace tres años. In Italian it is tre anni fa — it takes a while to get used to the position of fa.

The past conditional can be weird
In Italian, ero sicuro que sarebbe andato means "I was sure that he would go". That's confusing because translating word for word, we get "I was sure that he would have gone", which is also what the direct Spanish translation estaba seguro de que habría ido would mean.

Other examples:
✽ ha detto che sarebbe tornato presto → ha dicho que volvería pronto

Different Triggers for the Subjunctive
In Italian, some triggers for the subjunctive mood sound very strange to a speaker of Spanish or French.

✽ Non so chi sia stato invitato sounds awful as no sé quien sea habido invitado or je ne sais pas qui aie été invité
✽ Penso que sia facile parlare inglese sounds awful as creo que sea facil hablar inglés or je pense que ce soit facile de parler anglais.
✽ Mi sembra che la cena sia pronta sounds awful as me parece que la cena esté lista or il me semble que le diner soit prêt.
✽ Si dice che il Torino abbia un fiume sounds awful as se dice que Torino haya un rio or on dit que Turin aie un fleuve.
✽ Se sarà scelto, sarà felice sounds awful as si será elegido, será feliz or s'il sera choisi, il sera content.
✽ I partecipanti che volessero mangiare dovranno pagare sounds a little off as los participantes que quisiesen comer tendrán que pagar and awful as les participants qui voulussent manger devront payer.
✽ È più caro di quanto pensassi sounds awful as es más caro de lo que pensase or c'est plus cher de ce que je pensasse.
✽ È più caro di quanto non sembri sounds awful as es más caro de lo que no parezca or c'est plus cher de ce qu'il ne paraisse pas.

Position of Pronouns when Using the Imperative
For the forms of imperative that use the subjunctive, Italian places the pronouns before the verb, Spanish after:

✽ Lo faccia e glielo dica → Hazlo y díselo

Imagining Ojalá
The Italian construction Potessi comprare un libro! sounds strange as a word-for-word translation for ¡Pudiera comprar un libro!
In such cases, the trick is to mentally add an Ojalá: as ¡Ojalá pudiera comprar un libro!, the phrase makes sense.

Other examples of strange-sounding wishes:
✽ Magari l'avessi saputo prima!

Preposition Mismatch
In many languages, prepositions are the final frontier. These little words can make all the difference between sounding foreign or native.

Taking the verb "to go", think of the differences in meaning between to go in (a battlefield), to go over (a report), to go under (for a business), to go out (for a fire), to go through (for a law), to go about (one's business), to go absent, to go against (a proposal), to go along (with a suggestion), to go into (a story), to go down (for a leader), to go off (for a gun)... I could go on.

It's only natural that Italian and Spanish preposition usage would not always match. Here are some examples of Italian usage that can take a Spanish speaker by surprise.

✽ Creo que tengo razon → Penso di aver ragione
✽ Él cree averlo visto → Crede di averlo visto
✽ Se que estaba equivocado → So di aver sbagliato
✽ No puedo vivir sin ella → Non posso vivere senza di lei
✽ Lo eché sobre él → L'ho gettato su di lui
✽ Recuerdo averlo visto → Mi ricordo di averlo visto
✽ Espero tener éxito → Spero di riuscire
✽ Sospechaba tener una enfermedad → Sospettavo di avere una malattia
✽ Basta con mirarlo → Basta Ø guardarlo
✽ Soñé con tu abuela → Ho sognato Ø tua nonna
✽ Iré a Torino en enero → Andrò a Torino a gennaio
✽ Comieron un pescado por persona → Mangiarono un pesce a persona
✽ Se fue al banco → Andò in banca
✽ Iré a Francia → Andrò in Francia
✽ Nos encontramos en casa de Luigi → Ci troviamo da Luigi
✽ La pelicula fue rodada por Fellini → Il film fu girato da Fellini
✽ Lo leí en el periódico → L'ho letto sul giornale

Of course there are many other cases when prepositions don't match.

Different Genders
Many words which are feminine in Spanish are masculine in Italian, and vice-versa. For instance,

✽ la legumbre → il legume
✽ la araña → il ragno
✽ el chocolate → la cioccolata

In addition, some nouns switch gender in the plural:
✽ il paio → le paia
✽ l'uovo → le uova
✽ el riso → le risa
✽ etc.

There are more subtleties, such as nouns that only switch genders when used in a literal sense:
✽ il braccio → le braccia
✽ il dito → le dita
✽ etc.

Use of the articles with the names of regions, large islands, continents
Unlike Spanish, Italian requires the definite article with certain geographical names:

✽ Il Piemonte, la Lombardia
✽ La Sicilia, la Sardegna
✽ L'Italia, la Svizzera
✽ L'Asia, l'Europa

Italian sometimes omits the article where Spanish doesn't
✽ refugiarse en el campo → rifugiarsi in campagna
✽ ir a la iglesia → andare in chiesa
✽ estar en la oficina → stare in ufficio
✽ vivir en el pueblo → vívere in paese
✽ voy a la escuela → vado a scuola

Italian sometimes uses the article where Spanish doesn't
✽ a principios de mes → ai primi del mese
✽ un día u otro → un giorno o l'altro
✽ por primera vez → per la prima volta
✽ Tenemos que reconocer el valor y ánimo del enemigo → Dobbiamo riconoscere il valore e il coraggio del nemico

Italian capitalizes the inhabitants of a country
If you're like me, you'll probably prefer the Italian way (closer to English):

✽ los italianos trabajan para el progreso humano → gl'Italiani lavorano per il progresso umano
✽ but (unlike English): los productos italianos son famosos → i prodotti italiani sono famosi
✽ and (unlike English): el Inglés está más difundido que el Italiano → l'inglese è più diffuso dell'italiano

Mi casa
Italian has a different prepositional treatment of casa.

✽ Voy a mi casa → vado a casa
✽ Vuelve a su casa → torna a casa

More of the same
For these cognates you have to learn more words to read Italian:

✽ semejante → símile, siffatto
✽ mismo → stesso, medésimo
✽ cada → ogni, ciascuno, ciascheduno
✽ algo → qualcosa, alcunché
✽ ninguno → nessuno, veruno, niuno
✽ alguno → alcuno, qualcuno, qualcheduno, taluno, certuno
✽ cualquiera → qualunque, qualsíasi, qualsivoglia
✽ quienquiera → chiunque, chicchessia
✽ nada → niente, nulla
✽ …and many more

Different treatment of dates
✽ 5 de abril → il 5 aprile

The order of double pronouns is inverted
✽ Se nos invita a ir → Ci si invita a andare
✽ Se os elogia mucho → Vi si elogia molto
✽ Se le envía un regalo → Gli si invia un regalo

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Specific Difficulties of Spanish

por and para
The differences between these two prepositions trip all language learners.

ser and estar
It's too early in my journey with Italian to tell for sure, but my initial impression is that grasping the difference between these two Spanish verbs is far more of a hurdle than that between essere and stare in Italian.

tú and vos
If you're exposed to Spanish from various parts of the world (and who wouldn't after a while), you'll come across these alternate pronouns. In my opinion, if you come from the tú world (which is standard), the conjugation for vos is so straightforward that it's more a game than a problem.

-mento or -miento? -des- or -dis?
Spanish has a number of prefixes and suffixes that are nearly identical, which can make it hard to memorize words. For instance,

✽ It's fletamento but comportamiento
✽ It's distender but destornillar
✽ It's ensordecedor but abrumador
✽ It's asistente but combatiente

In addition, the construction of words is not always intuitive:

✽ why is a sliding door una puerta corredera and not corredora?

This is also true in Italian, though (and in French, and in English). To a large part, these disconnects can be blamed on Greek and Latin.

Feminine or Masculine?
This difficulty exists in any language where nouns have genders, including Italian. Depending on the languages you already know, some of the Spanish nouns may cause trouble.

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There are Way More Resources for Learning Spanish

✽ Instituto Cervantes. In comparison with Italy's Società Dante Alighieri centers, Spain's Instituto Cervantes is a centralized body present in more cities, usually with excellent libraries and cultural programs. Among other things, this means it's easier to find a place to sit the DELE exams than it is to find places where to sit the PLIDA (both are tests that accredit you on Europe's standard CEFR scale: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2).

✽ Number of affordable language tutors. If you want to practice a language, you'll soon discover the convenience of iTalki (this link gives us both ten dollars off), where you can find casual tutors from around the world. For Spanish, I used to have seven one-hour sessions a week, costing from four to ten US dollars an hour, largely depending on the tutor's country of origin. The last time I checked, in that price range, there were 489 native tutors available for Spanish and 75 for Italian.

✽ Convenient timezones to chat with tutors. Since Spanish is the official language of 21 countries, you can find tutors in more timezones than for Italian.

✽ More literature. Same logic: more countries → more books and magazines.

✽ More grammar books. A slightly different point. Spanish is such a widely-studied language that I was able to drill into tricky parts of the language by reading books focusing on narrow points of grammar, such as (i) ser vs. estar, (ii) por vs. para, (iii) prepositions, (iv) pronouns. For Italian, that wealth of grammatical resources is not available.

✽ Interesting podcasts. For Spanish, I built a list of podcasts that I loved to listen to — not language-learning podcasts, but programs for native speakers, on topics ranging from movies to neuroscience. Some are from Spain, some from Argentina, there's even one from the States. For Italian, I'm having a harder time finding podcasts on topics that interest me.

✽ More music. Sure, like everyone, I have a handful of favorite Italian pop songs, not to mention a few Italo disco tunes. But the amount of contemporary Italian music is dwarfed in comparison to that in Spanish. (For a fun sample of contemporary Spanish music, check out this playlist.)

✽ More apps. The Google Play Store is awash with Spanish verb conjugators, dictionaries and other resources to learn the language. Meanwhile, I'm struggling to find useful ones for Italian.

✽ More films & TV series. Speaking of contemporary production, there is more in Spanish. You can watch series from Spain, Mexico, Colombia… If we're talking quality as opposed to quantity, then of course Italian cinema has a fantastic back-catalog, not to mention a very decent ongoing production.

✽ More places to study. For Italian, if you want immersion, there's Italy. For Spanish, there are 21 countries (22 if you count parts of the United States). Many of those aren't entirely safe, but in a good number of them there are "safe pockets" in privileged areas.

✽ DLE. The Spanish language has an extraordinary dictionary, the Diccionario de la lengua española (DLE) published by the Asociación de Academias de La Lengua Española (a body to which belongs the Real Academia Española [RAE], which is not the dictionary's author as many believe). This dictionary is a treasure. It unifies the language, showing words' meanings across the Spanish-speaking world. The web version is complete, free and excellent. The app version has two flavors, the ad-supported one, and the ad-free one, which works offline, and for which I was happy to pay ten dollars. As far as I know, for Italian, nothing comes close (among online options are the Treccani, as well as those from Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, Sapere and La RAI).

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Which should I learn anyway — Spanish or Italian?

For some people, the choice between Spanish and Italian is obvious — or there is not even a choice: their girlfriend is Italian; they want to connect to their Napolitan roots; their employer is sending them to Mexico.

For the rest of us, there is not one single answer to the question of which language to learn: it very much depends on our particular interests. This section tries to list some of the many possible considerations.

Number of native speakers: Spanish.
It's not just that 450 million people live in countries where Spanish is an official language while only 60 million live in Italy. It's that among the sixty who live in Italy, many people's main language is actually one of the one of the 33 other languages currently spoken in Italy. And among those who mainly speak Italian, many actually speak a regional variation that may differ substantially from what you'll find in Italian language courses.

This means that if you study modern Italian hard for a couple of years, these sixty million people will understand you, but depending on where you are in the country, there's a good chance that you won't be able to understand them!

Friends: it depends on you.
I'll now somehow deflate the above argument. Yes, the Spanish-speaking world has more people. But as someone who invested a lot of time to get really good at Japanese in the late eighties but who today doesn't have a single person with whom to speak that language, I laugh at anyone who argues in favor of learning a language on the basis of the number of people who speak it. It's not about how many people speak a language, it's about how many of these people you want to speak with.

But don't let me keep you from learning Mandarin or Hindustani, go right ahead!

With respect to chosing between Spanish and Italian, the question is highly personal.

Culture in an old-world sense: Italian
If you're interested in traditional European-type Culture with a capital C (without diving into individual fields) then in my view Italy packs more culture per capita than Spanish-speaking countries. I realize this is controversial. I base this view on a few subjective data points.

One such data point is the kinds of architecture and urban design I've seen in various countries. I just don't get the kind of wow walking through Madrid (the country's capital!) that can overcome me when walking through an Italian city, even one so low on the tourist scale as Torino (love it), to say nothing of Italy's many tourist magnets. Granted, I've never been to Salamanca, Sevilla or Granada.

Another subjective measure of a country's old-world "Culture" is its count of Nobel laureates. For this particular metric, as of early 2019, excluding the Peace Prize, Wikipedia reported 20 Italian Nobel laureates and 19 laureates from countries where Spanish is an official language. Today there are about 450 million people in countries where Spanish is an official language (that excludes the United States) and 60 million in Italy. This means that while over its history Italy has produced one Nobel prize winner for every three million "units of current population" (hereafter ucp), Spanish-speaking countries have required 24 million ucp for each Nobel laureate (eight times as many).

Say what you will about all kinds of biases involved: while I might agree with you, I still think that in this discrepancythere is some truth that favors Italy.

So on the face of it, if you are looking for "cultured company" in the narrow sense set out above, you might have more luck in Italy than in Spanish-speaking countries. On the other hand, neither of these worlds are homogeneous, so that you'd probably have more luck on specific blocks of Buenos Aires than in certain rural areas of Italy.

Cinema: yesterday Italian, today Spanish?
Historically, for quality cinema, I would have had to go with Italy. I love Cría Cuervos as much as the next film buff, but Spain didn't have much going on during the Franco years, and Latin American countries were far behind.

For contemporary cinema, I'd lean on the side of Spanish-speaking film, from Spain to Argentina, Chile (Una Mujer Fantástica) and Uruguay (El Baño del Papa, La Noche De 12 Años).

For film criticism, on the other hand, in 2019 I'm finding the Italian podcast Ricciotto far more deeper than Spain's Todopoderosos and Cinemascopazo. Italians can analyze!

Fiction: Spanish?
I'm finding a lot more that I want to read from the Spanish-speaking world than from Italy.

Opera: Italian.
If you're an opera buff, then there's no question, the language you have to study is German. Haha, I meant French. Sorry, yes, of course, Italian have a certain degree of relevance in the Opera world…

And despite Wikipedia's attempt at an article to attest the contrary, there's basically no opera in the Spanish language.

Contemporary music (and dance): Spanish.
The Spanish-language music world is vibrant and has music for all tastes. I didn't have much trouble coming up with a playlist of fun contemporary music in Spanish, but for Italian, it's a struggle.

Hiking: a wash?
Looking at continental Europe, Italy's Alps probably wins over Spain's Pirineos and Sierra Nevada. Further afield but still on Spanish territory, Tenerife has undeniable charms. But if you have the budget, the Andes probably has enough to keep you busy for a long, long time.

Food: it depends on you.
Since I'm on a whole-plant-based diet, the cuisines of Italian- or Spanish-speaking restaurants are indifferent to me.

Before going whole-plant, I was one of those people who never understood the concept of Italian cuisine. What, pay someone to boil pasta? But hispanic food didn't grab me either: I realize that Peruvian restaurants are all the rage in the Spanish-speaking world, but I don't think I can get over the stomach upsets that crippled me in Peru in 1981, without mentioning the barbecued hamster.

Nachos or pizza, it's up to you, but in my view either of those are a weak reason to learn a language.

Fashion: what does that have to do with language?
Sure, Armani and the lot. But are you going to talk about fashion in Italian?

Sonority: Italian? Spanish?
Many people say that Italian is the sweetest language on the ears, but I'm not sure that mine hear it that way. For instance, the accent of the Canary islands makes me smile in a way that Italian doesn't. And bear in mind that Spanish has many different modalities with widely-ranging accents.

If you want the best of both worlds, you might like to listen to the porteño accent, the way that people from Buenos Aires speak Spanish with intonations strongly influenced by Italian.

Body language: Italian (but is that Italian?)
From what I understand, Italy has lots of gestures that convey specific meanings. But how much does that have to do with sitting down to learn the Italian language?

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Sources

✽ Italiano: Gramática — Antología by Filippo Basile (Montevideo, 1966)
✽ Bescherelle: L'Italien Pour Tous

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That's about it for now. I hope this page gave you a good sense of how much harder than Spanish Italian is to learn for an English speaker. No joke.

Wishing you loads of fun on the language-learning path!

Smiles,

Andy