Italian Language
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50 free Italian Language trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Italian is the language people meet long before they study it. It is printed on restaurant menus, written across sheet music and tucked inside dozens of ordinary English words. Yet the standard tongue is younger than it looks: for centuries the peninsula spoke a patchwork of regional languages, and a single shared Italian had to be argued over, written down and taught. This quiz covers the vocabulary a beginner meets first, such as greetings, numbers, family terms and polite replies, along with the literal meanings hiding in the names of pasta shapes, coffees, desserts and musical markings. Other questions trace English words back to their Italian roots, test the false friends that catch out tourists, and look at where Italian is spoken beyond Italy and at the poets, scholars and academies who shaped it. It is pitched for beginners, travellers and curious quizzers, with a few harder questions for students who are further along. You do not need to speak Italian to play, since every question is asked in English. Each answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches you something, and the questions can be printed for a class, a family quiz night or a study group.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which everyday Italian greeting grew out of a Venetian phrase that literally meant 'I am your slave'?
Ciao
Ciao began as 's-ciào vostro', a courteous Venetian way of saying 'at your service'. It spread across northern Italy only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Q 02A traveller who asks for just a 'latte' in an Italian café will be served a glass of what?
Milk
Milk is all that 'latte' means in Italian, where it is an everyday word. The espresso drink is a caffè latte, and it is traditionally served in a glass.
Q 03A diner in Italy who orders a pizza with 'peperoni' gets which topping instead of spicy salami?
Bell peppers
Bell peppers are what 'peperoni', the plural of 'peperone', means in Italian. The spicy salami is an American creation, and a chilli is a 'peperoncino'.
Q 04What does the name of tiramisù, Italy's coffee-soaked dessert layered with mascarpone, literally mean?
Pick me up
Pick me up is what 'tirami su' means in Italian. The dessert is younger than it looks: one widely reported account has it invented at a Treviso restaurant in 1969.
Q 05Which English word comes from the Venetian for 'forty days', the time ships once had to wait before landing?
Quarantine
Quarantine comes from the Venetian 'quarantena'. It replaced a shorter wait, the thirty-day 'trentino' that Ragusa, now Dubrovnik, first imposed on newcomers in 1377.
Q 06The word 'paparazzi' comes from a news photographer named Paparazzo in which Federico Fellini film?
La Dolce Vita
La Dolce Vita won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1960. Fellini said the name Paparazzo suggested to him 'a buzzing insect, hovering, darting, stinging'.
Q 07Italians call the @ symbol of email addresses 'chiocciola', the everyday Italian word for which creature?
A snail
A snail is what Italians see in the symbol's coil. Dutch speakers picture a different animal and call it 'apenstaart', which means monkey tail.
Q 08English speakers dine 'al fresco' on a terrace, but in Italian slang the same phrase means spending time where?
In jail
In jail is the slang Italian sense of 'al fresco', which literally means 'in the cool'. For a meal outdoors, Italians say 'all'aperto' or 'fuori' instead.
Q 09What does 'Vespa', the name Enrico Piaggio gave his company's famous motor scooter, mean in Italian?
Wasp
Wasp is what the prototype's thick tail and narrow waist looked like to Enrico Piaggio, who exclaimed 'Sembra una vespa!' on first seeing it.
Q 10The piano's full Italian name, pianoforte, joins the words for which two qualities of sound?
Soft and loud
Soft and loud is the meaning: Bartolomeo Cristofori's new instrument could play both. The harpsichord it grew out of gives no such control over individual notes.
Q 11Which medieval poet, condemned to lifelong exile from his home city, is called the father of the Italian language?
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri wrote his Divine Comedy in his native Tuscan when Latin still ruled serious writing. Italians often call him simply 'il Sommo Poeta', the Supreme Poet.
Q 12Standard Italian grew out of the literary dialect of which Tuscan city, rather than the speech of Rome?
Florence
Florence had prestige and geography on its side: its dialect was a middle way between the speech of northern and southern Italy, which helped it win out.
Q 13Italy's national football team is nicknamed the Azzurri, an Italian word for which colour of the players' shirts?
Blue
Q 21What does 'al dente', the Italian term for pasta boiled so that it stays firm, literally mean?
To the tooth
To the tooth is the literal sense: the pasta should still resist when bitten. Pasta served this way also has a lower glycaemic index than pasta boiled until limp.
Q 22Italic type, named for its birth in Italy, was first used in 1500 by which Venetian printer and humanist?
Aldus Manutius
Aldus Manutius did not intend italics for emphasis. He wanted a compact type that looked like handwriting, for compact, easily carried editions of popular books.
Q 23Farfalle, the pinched pasta that Americans call bow ties, takes its Italian name from which creatures?
Butterflies
Blue was the traditional colour of the Savoy dynasty, Italy's former royal family, which is why the team wears it rather than the green, white and red of the flag.
Q 14Italians wish each other good luck with 'in bocca al lupo', a phrase that sends a person into which animal's mouth?
A wolf
A wolf is the danger in this phrase, a wish that works like the English 'break a leg'. The standard reply is 'crepi il lupo', meaning 'may the wolf die'.
Q 15In the 'gorgia' of Tuscan speech, the hard c between vowels in a word like 'identificare' turns into which sound?
An h
An h takes the place of the k sound, so the word comes out as 'identifihare'. The name gorgia means 'throat', and the habit is strongest in central Tuscany.
Q 16What does 'opera', the Italian word borrowed around the world for sung stage drama, literally mean?
Work
Work is the literal meaning, covering both the labour and its result. The Italian word comes from Latin, where 'opera' also served as the plural of 'opus'.
Q 17In Italy, 'confetti' are not scraps of coloured paper but which sweets, often given as wedding favours?
Sugared almonds
Sugared almonds are what Italians mean by confetti. The paper kind is called 'coriandoli', after the sugar-coated coriander seeds once thrown at carnivals.
Q 18Which Italian word, literally 'I pray', is the standard polite reply when someone says thank you?
Prego
Prego is one of the handiest words a beginner can learn. Besides 'you're welcome', it means 'after you' at a doorway and 'of course' in answer to a request.
Q 19In Italian, counting begins uno, due, tre; which word for a number comes next?
Quattro
Quattro means four, which is why Audi picked it in 1980 as the name of its four-wheel-drive system.
Q 20Which relative does an Italian child call 'nonna', a word that has also passed into informal English?
Grandmother
Grandmother is 'nonna' and grandfather is 'nonno'. The prefix bis- steps back another generation, so a 'bisnonna' is a great-grandmother.
Butterflies are 'farfalle' in Italian. In Emilia-Romagna the same pasta is known as 'strichetti', a local word that does mean bow ties.
Q 24English menus treat 'panini' as one sandwich, but it is an Italian plural; which word names a single one?
Panino
Panino is a diminutive of the Italian for bread and properly means a bread roll. The same trap catches 'paparazzi': one photographer is a 'paparazzo'.
Q 25Which letter is missing from the traditional 21-letter Italian alphabet and turns up only in borrowed words?
W
W shares its outsider status with J, K, X and Y. Italians meet it mostly in loanwords such as 'weekend' and in foreign names.
Q 26The English word 'fiasco', meaning a humiliating failure, is the ordinary Italian word for which object?
A bottle
A bottle, usually the round straw-wrapped kind that holds Chianti. The 'failure' sense comes from the theatre phrase 'far fiasco', literally 'to make a bottle'.
Q 27A medieval scheme sorted the Romance languages by their word for 'yes'; which word, still in use, marked Italian?
Sì
Sì made Italian 'the language of sì'. The rival word 'oc' labelled the speech of southern France, and it survives on the map in the region called Languedoc.
Q 28The Italian word 'influenza' named the illness after an old belief that epidemics were caused by what?
The stars
The stars were thought to send down an 'influence' that made people ill. English borrowed the Italian word in 1743, during an outbreak that was sweeping Europe.
Q 29Which word was first the name of the Venice district where Jews were compelled to live from 1516?
Ghetto
Ghetto is recorded in English from the 1610s, and its deeper origin is disputed. One theory links it to 'getto', a foundry that stood near the district.
Q 30Which Italian port city gave its name, by way of French, to the hard-wearing cotton trousers called jeans?
Genoa
Genoa is 'Gênes' in French, which English turned into 'jeans'. Denim has a matching story: it is short for 'de Nîmes', after the French city that wove it.