Learning Italian Words Through Etymology and Mnemonics
A New Approach to Vocabulary Study

Learning Italian Words Through Etymology and Mnemonics will be the third book in the “Learning Foreign Language Words” series (the first being Learning Spanish Words, the second Learning French Words). The book is expected to be completed in mid-2025. The format will be the same as that of the other two books in the series, except that each headword is prefixed with its frequency rank, and more information about etymology and cognation in other Romance languages (Spanish and French) are provided.

Different Study Methods

⎢                                ⎡ Etymology ⎤
               ⎡ Word analysis <-⎢           ⎥-> this book
               ⎢                 ⎣ Mnemonics ⎦
Study method <-⎢
               ⎢
               ⎣ Rote memory (e.g. flash cards)

Sample Pages

The main text of this little dictionary arranges the words in the order of their usage frequency, per the itWaCItalian Web Corpus, "a 2 billion word corpus constructed from the Web limiting the crawl to the .it domain", which can be downloaded here (warning: big file) frequency list. The book is being updated on a daily basis. As of November 2024, the book has 149 pages (not including index).

• Introduction and Notes
• Sample pages 1 from pp.1-2, 2 from pp.5-6
• Sample pages 3 from pp.9-10, 4 from pp.13-14
• Sample pages 5 from pp.19-20, 6 from pp.25-26
• Sample pages 7 from pp.31-32, 8 from pp.37-38
• Sample pages 9 from pp.45-46, 10 from pp.53-54
• Sample pages 11 from pp.63-64, 12 from pp.73-74
• Sample pages 13 from pp.87-88, 14 from pp.105-106

Author Biography and Contact

I have a Ph.D. in Chemistry and M.A. in Philosophy. I have taught myself linguistics with an emphasis on morphological and phonological changes in the history of Romance languages, and have learned to read in multiple European languages. Please contact me by email to yong321@yahoo.com or by filling the form with comments or corrections.

Availability

This book will remain unpublished indefinitely. In the meantime, the full manuscript can be requested on a donation basis. With a $15 or more donation through Venmo (use my venmo username @Yong-Huang-13 or email yong321@yahoo.com), Zelle or Quickpay, Paypal, or by other means, you will receive a copy of the e-book, on the condition that the received copy is only shared within your immediate family. In the future, a few days before Christmas, you will receive an indexed, updated version of the book for free, every year.

Brief Timeline and Blog

• 2022-07 Evaluating various Italian word frequency lists.
• 2022-10 Beginning headword entries.

Yong Huang
July 2022 — November 2024