CiaoCompass is for people who are going to Italy, or who came from Italy, and want to understand what is being said around them.
It is not a fluency course. If your goal is to read Dante in the original, there are better places to spend your time. If your goal is to order dinner in Bologna without pointing at the menu and hoping for the best, you are in the right place.
Who this is for
Three kinds of people, mostly:
- Travelers who want enough Italian to move through the country with confidence rather than anxiety
- Italian-Americans reconnecting with a language their grandparents or great-grandparents spoke
- Anyone tracing family roots back to a specific town in Italy and running into a wall of unfamiliar records
These groups overlap more than you would think. The person planning a trip to Puglia is often the same person who wants to find the church where their great-grandmother was baptized.
How the content here gets made
Every Italian phrase, translation, and pronunciation guide published on this site is reviewed by a native Italian speaker before it goes live. Language content is easy to get subtly wrong, and wrong language content is worse than no content at all, because it teaches you to make a mistake confidently.
Travel and genealogy content is researched from primary sources wherever possible. Where something is a matter of opinion or personal preference rather than fact, we say so plainly instead of dressing it up as expertise.
When we get something wrong, we fix it and leave a note saying what changed. Corrections are welcome and taken seriously.
How this site makes money
CiaoCompass earns money through affiliate commissions and advertising. When we recommend a course, an app, a tutor, a tour, or a piece of gear, we may earn a commission if you buy through our link, at no additional cost to you.
That relationship never determines what gets recommended. We recommend things we would recommend to a friend, and we say when something is not worth your money even when there would be a commission in it. You can read the full Affiliate Disclosure for details.
Where the name comes from
Ciao is the first Italian word almost everyone learns. A compass is what you want when you are somewhere unfamiliar and need to know which way to go. That is the whole idea.
Get in touch
Corrections, questions, or suggestions for what to cover next are all welcome on the Contact page.