I'll be moving to italy, as some of you know, in August. I was told the easiest way to learn italian, was by watching an american movie in italian. Does anyone know where you can find movies like that in the states, or does anyone know of any DVD's that have an italian language selection on it?

thanks for all of the help!
Dani

Based on my own personal experience, the best way to learn is to actually take a few classes to get the basics in. YOu can take classes at a local junior college here in the US(cheap!) or you can enroll in one of the many language schools in Italy.

But, then again, this all depends on one's learning styles. I have a friend who simply taught himself Italian using a book! :0 Good luck! It's a fun, complicated language but it's worth it and necessary since you'll be living there!

By the way, the only movie that I'm sure has an Italian language option (off the top of my head) is Harry Potter! I'll try to remember a few more...

Thanks for all of the help, and i'm sure it'll be helpful for me, and i'll try to find a class to enroll in.
Thankyou!

Life is Beautiful is in Italian with English subtitles. If you check out the foreign language section of your local video store you'll be able to find others (Panne e Tulipani is another excellent choice).

I too find that learning via a class or speaking with others is the easiest way for me to learn a language. Second best for me is to listen to audio language tapes in my car. That's how I was able to learn enough Italian to get by on a week's vacation there.

Do you have any background in Italian at all? If so, I suppose you might pick up some of the vocabulary by watching a movie, but unless you already have a foundation in grammar and structure,I really can't imagine much useful language acquisition could come out of watching movies except maybe better pronounciation, which is easy in Italian anyway.
As a case in point, my son and I watched "The Way Home" this weekend, a Korean movie. Neither one of us speaks a word of Korean, but we are both very interested in foreign languages and have some aptitude for them. Of course, there were subtitles in the movie, so we knew what was being said, and when certain words or phrases were repeated often in the movie, we figured them out. Still, by the end of a two-hour movie, the only Korean we had picked up was the word for no, and the phrase "you retard!" NOT very helpful, considering what we might have learned in a two-hour Korean class.

It sounds very enticing to just learn another language by watching movies. I suppose it is easy but you won't learn it that way.

If you are actually moving to Italy, I would think you had better start studying Italian very seriously immediately, in a class, unless you will be surrounded by English-speakers and you don't care about learning the language. YOu aren't going to learn Italian by watching movies, although I think doing that in addition to everything else may be a good idea. MOvies are not that easy to understand unless you are close to fluent in a language, for one thing. I've studied French for years and still miss a lot in a French movie.

I highly recommend the Pimsleur Audio series, although it is expensive. You can learn basic conversational functionality in only a few weeks completely in your car, on the drive to work for example. 5 weeks of Pimsleur Italian and I was confident in basic directions and interactions. Much better than the other, less expensive options I looked at.

There is no way to learn Italian from movies except to refine what you know after a year of two of study.

The only way to learn it is to

1. take courses and listen to tapes (Pimsleur is excellent and I still know verb forms that I learned from intensive listening before I left for Italy).

2. take an immersion course in Italy (two to four weeks); and finally, and this is the most fun. . .

3. find an Italian boyfriend (or girlfriend) as soon as you can. This is the best method by far. No one says this in the literature, but trust Auntie SantaChiara, who is still searching for her own "fidanzato" with whom to practice her Italian, among other things.

I second SantaChiara's 3rd suggestion...practice makes perfect!

While Italian is nowhere close to Japanese...my son moved to Japan to teach English. Everyone he worked with spoke English, so the first year or two, he hardly learned any Japanese, only those words one MUST know.
Now, going into his 4th year, he decided to get serious about learning Japanese and he is taking classes twice a week and only speaking Japanese when he goes out with Japanese friends, regardless if they speak English.
So ... (my stories all have a point, some are just a long time coming )
I believe listening to tapes, taking classes AND watching movies is what will help you.
I have been to France many times, and love French movies, but I would not get along very well, if no one spoke English.
Good luck !