Italian food vocabulary
These are the Italian words about food that come up most often in real speech, ranked by how often they appear in film and TV subtitles. Start with the first ones, such as cavolo (cabbage), cena (dinner), cibo (food), because you will run into them on almost any page about the subject, and the rarer words make more sense once those are familiar.
Words in this list: 30
| # | Word | Pronunciation | Translation | Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | cavolo | /ˈka.vo.lo/ | cabbage | A2 |
| 2 | cena | /ˈt͡ʃeː.na/ | dinner | A2 |
| 3 | cibo | /ˈt͡ʃiː.bo/ | food | A2 |
| 4 | pero | /ˈpe.ro/ | pear | A2 |
| 5 | pranzo | /ˈpran.d͡zo/ | lunch | A2 |
| 6 | birra | /ˈbir.ra/ | beer | A2 |
| 7 | carne | /ˈkar.ne/ | meat | A2 |
| 8 | vino | /ˈvi.no/ | wine | A2 |
| 9 | caffè | /kaf.ˈfɛ/ | coffee | A2 |
| 10 | colazione | /ko.latˈt͡sjoː.ne/ | breakfast | A2 |
| 11 | ristorante | /ris.toˈran.te/ | restaurant | A2 |
| 12 | latte | /ˈlat.te/ | milk | B1 |
| 13 | pollo | /ˈpol.lo/ | chicken | B1 |
| 14 | tè | /ˈtɛ/ | tea | B1 |
| 15 | pane | /ˈpa.ne/ | bread | B1 |
| 16 | pizza | /ˈpit.t͡sa/ | pizza | B1 |
| 17 | maiale | /maˈja.le/ | pork | B1 |
| 18 | formaggio | /forˈmad.d͡ʒo/ | cheese | B1 |
| 19 | tazza | /ˈtat.t͡sa/ | cup | B1 |
| 20 | champagne | /ʃamˈpaɲ/ | champagne | B1 |
| 21 | alcol | /ˈal.kol/ | alcohol | B1 |
| 22 | zucchero | /ˈtsukkero/ | sugar | B1 |
| 23 | riso | /ˈri.so/ | rice | B2 |
| 24 | miele | /ˈmjɛ.le/ | honey | B2 |
| 25 | salsa | /ˈsal.sa/ | sauce | B2 |
| 26 | zuppa | /ˈt͡sup.pa/ | soup | B2 |
| 27 | succo | /ˈsuk.ko/ | juice | B2 |
| 28 | pasto | /ˈpa.sto/ | meal | B2 |
| 29 | burro | /ˈbur.ro/ | butter | B2 |
| 30 | whisky | /ˈwis.ki/ | whiskey | B2 |
How to make these words stick
A list helps you see what matters, but a word only stays after you have met it several times in real sentences and pulled it out of memory yourself. That is how NativeLingo works: it swaps a few of these words into the pages you already read, at your level and in the right form, and then a short daily review asks you to type them back.
Try it on what you read today.
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Sources: translations and pronunciation from Wiktionary (wikdict, CC BY-SA 3.0) and ipa-dict (MIT), frequency from OpenSubtitles (FrequencyWords).