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Nell'ottobre del 1943 l'uomo che aveva promesso di tornare non tornò. La città era piena di soldati e la gente non usciva più di casa. C'era un silenzio strano, come se tutti aspettassero qualcosa che non sarebbe mai arrivato. Il vecchio Giacomo guardava dalla finestra, sfogliando un giornale ingiallito che aveva già letto tre volte.
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Roughly how many Italian words do you know?
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Words ranked by frequency
Rarest first, with each word’s rank on the Italian frequency list. Choose a vocabulary size above to see words you may not know yet.
- tornòreturned9,481
- uscivawas going out6,256
- guardavawas watching5,081
- ottobreOctober4,555
- giornalenewspaper1,916
- soldatisoldiers1,598
- finestrawindow1,358
- pienafull (f)1,103
- promessopromised1,054
- silenziosilence1,007
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Clues from English
Some words resemble English, some look familiar but mean something different, and others offer fewer clues.
Similar words, different meanings
They look like an English word and mean something else.
Words you may recognise from English
These resemble English words with related meanings. Check the meanings below to see whether your guess fits the passage.
giornale newspaper·soldati soldiers·promesso promised·silenzio silence·arrivato arrived·città city·strano strange
Rare words with fewer English clues
These uncommon words may be harder to guess from English alone.
- tornò returned
- usciva was going out
What the Italian sample shows
In the sample, tornare and tornò are forms of the same verb: “to return” and “returned”. The checker ranks each written form separately; sfogliando (“leafing through”) and ingiallito (“yellowed”) add detail beyond the basic events of the passage.
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The estimate uses the frequency of Italian word forms to find the vocabulary size needed to cover nine in ten words matched to our list. Words outside the list are reported separately and excluded from that estimate.
This is a vocabulary check, not a grammar checker or a CEFR assessment. It does not measure sentence complexity or guarantee that you will understand the passage.
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