Ask for burro in Rome and you'll get butter. In Madrid, burro is a donkey.
Italian makes its plurals and some of its sounds differently from Spanish, and far fewer countries use it.
| Spanish | Italian | |
|---|---|---|
| Official in | 21 countries | Italy, San Marino, Switzerland and Vatican City |
| First-language speakers | About 519 million | About 65 million |
| Plurals | Add s: libro, libros | Change the last vowel: libro, libri |
Italian also holds some consonants longer, which can turn one word into another: sete is thirst, and sette is seven.
| Spanish | Means | Italian | Means |
|---|---|---|---|
| caldo | Broth | caldo | Warm, hot |
| salir | To go out | salire | To go up |
Spanish gets 30 weeks of class at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute (FSI), and Italian gets 24.
| Study per week | FSI Spanish course (690 hours) | FSI Italian course (552 hours) |
|---|---|---|
| 3½ hours | About 3 years 9 months | About 3 years |
| 7 hours | About 1 year 11 months | About 1 year 6 months |
| 14 hours | About 11 months | About 9 months |
| 28 hours | About 6 months | About 5 months |
| If you want to… | Start with |
|---|---|
| Use it across most of Latin America | Spanish |
| Take the DELE | Spanish |
| Study art, music or cooking in Italy | Italian |
| Take the CILS or CELI | Italian |
| Keep up with relatives in Italy | Italian |
Spanish: In the Kitchen
En la cocina
Mateo is in the kitchen.
Hello, Sofía. How are you?
I am very well. Thank you for the food.
Italian: A Quick Coffee
Un caffè veloce
Good morning!
Good morning! A coffee?
Thanks!
You're welcome!
Each has a thank-you in it: gracias in Spanish and grazie in Italian. Learners using Bubblegum, a language app, get lessons like these from Poppy, your AI tutor.
Bubblegum
Bubblegum is the best app for serious learners. You learn from text and audio you can mostly understand, which is called comprehensible input.
- Spanish and Italian verb tables color each ending, so hablo and parlo, which both mean "I speak," share the same colored -o.
- You can learn both, each in its own journey, and switch between them whenever you like.
- Clear, expressive AI voices read every lesson aloud, with a different voice for each speaker.
- A page of an Italian or Spanish novel you own fits in the chat, where Poppy explains it. The whole novel can't become a lesson.
- A new custom lesson costs us real money to make, so your first one is free, and Bubblegum Pro gives you unlimited custom lessons. The lesson library is free for everyone, because we believe everyone should be able to learn.
- Regenerative Review™
Mobile
Does Knowing Spanish Help With Italian?
Yes, mostly with words. Ethnologue, a catalog of the world's languages, rates Italian and Spanish vocabulary as 82% similar, so many words will look familiar.
Which App Should a Beginner Choose?
If you are serious about learning a language, start with Bubblegum. Poppy writes lessons at your level about things you like. For other apps, see the Spanish comparison and the Italian comparison.
Is Bubblegum Free?
Yes. The lesson library is free for everyone, because we believe everyone should be able to learn. It holds lessons that other learners asked Poppy for. A new custom lesson costs us real money to make, so your first one is free, and Bubblegum Pro gives you unlimited custom lessons.
Sources
- Wikipedia, Italian language (about 65 million first-language speakers; Ethnologue: 82% lexical similarity with Spanish; official in Italy, San Marino, Switzerland and Vatican City; short and long consonants contrast; intelligibility is markedly lower between Italian and Spanish than between Spanish and Portuguese)
- Wikipedia, Italian phonology (consonants between vowels can be single or doubled)
- Wikipedia, Spanish language (about 519 million first-language speakers as of 2025; official in 21 countries; five vowel sounds)
- Wiktionary, sete (Italian: thirst)
- Wiktionary, sette (Italian: seven)
- Wiktionary, libri (Italian: plural of libro)
- Wiktionary, libros (Spanish: plural of libro)
- Wiktionary, hablo (Spanish: I speak, from hablar)
- Wiktionary, parlo (Italian: I speak, from parlare)
- Wiktionary, burro (Italian: butter; Spanish: donkey)
- Wiktionary, caldo (Italian: warm, hot; Spanish: broth)
- Wiktionary, salire (Italian: to go up)
- Wiktionary, salir (Spanish: to go out, to leave)
- U.S. Department of State, Foreign Language Training (Category I: Italian 24 weeks and Spanish 30 weeks, of 552–690 class hours, for an ILR 3 in speaking and listening; a typical week is 23 hours in class)
- Bubblegum
Checked on October 5, 2026 against each app's own pages.
