When searching for the most useful Italian words to learn, you might come across lists of nouns like gatto (cat), cane (dog), casa (house), and so on. These are fine if you’re a total beginner, or a preschooler. But are they really the most useful words of all?

Like all good Italian students, I studied my endless lists of nouns and verb conjugations carefully. But in the end, the words that I found most helpful when I first moved to Italy were of a different sort. I heard the same few words being used over and over again in all kinds of contexts.