Come funziona Terzina

From A2 to C1. Your first Italian app taught you to order a coffee; Terzina is the second one, for when you want Italian with depth. The verses are the same at every level; what each lesson asks of you grows with your level. At A2, it is honest to say a poem from 1300 is not A2 reading: Dante’s lines still come first, with today’s Italian under them from the start.

10–15 minutes for your first tercet, about 6–8 for the next. The unit is one tercet, three lines. One a day is the goal, and two or three is a good day; after 5 the day turns to review. You will not rush through the poem: at a tercet a day it lasts years, and that is the point. What you learn along the way is the Italian of today, reached through the verses Italians still quote.

Your streak counts study, not minutes. A tercet passed, words reviewed, a verse learned by heart or a guardian faced: any of them keeps your days in a row. Careful, slow reading never costs you a day.

Every tercet is taught in the same five steps, always in this order:

1. 1Leggi · Read. Read the tercet slowly. Tap any word for what it means here, and whether an Italian would still say it: vivo, letterario or arcaico.
2. 2Ascolta · Listen. Hear it read aloud, whole or line by line, each word lit as it is spoken; then again with your eyes closed. Lento plays it at three-quarter speed.
3. 3Capisci · Understand. The grammar that makes it work, lit up word by word in the verse, a phrase Italians still say today, and a note on the scene.
4. 4Parla · Speak. Say it in today’s Italian, then read Dante’s lines aloud. Today’s Italian and the English are put away while you work from memory.
5. 5Verifica · Prove it. Prove you understood. Pass, and the tercet is yours: its chip on the rhyme chain turns gold.

Your guide, Virgil (and Beatrice from Purgatorio XXX on), says what to do at each step, just above the verse. The five steps sit at the top of the lesson, and you can move between them freely. Listening works in every step: play the whole tercet above the verse, or a single line by tapping its number. On a computer, keys help: Space plays or pauses the tercet, 1–3 play a line, Enter goes on, ← → move between tercets.

The verses never change with your level. What the lesson asks of you does. Choose yours in the welcome, or later from the level chip at the top of every page.

A2 · Elementare

Honestly: a poem from 1300 is not A2 reading, and we will not pretend it is. Dante’s lines always come first, and today’s Italian sits under them from the start; the English is one tap away in Aiuto. At this level the lesson is about that sentence of today’s Italian: you read it, hear it, rebuild it and say it. Move up whenever the modern sentence starts to feel easy.

B1 · Intermedio

You read Dante with help one tap away under the verse (today’s Italian or the English, one at a time), carry his dead words across to living ones by typing them, and prove you understood.

B2 · Intermedio alto

You read Dante cold. Today’s Italian is there verse by verse, but you try first and then look, and we count the looks. Before any verdict appears you say which words an Italian would still use. English leaves the lesson, and proof is production: you write today’s Italian from dictation and from Dante’s own words.

C1 · Avanzato

Honestly: for commentary, a good annotated edition (Chiavacci Leonardi, Sapegno, Bosco–Reggio) beats us on every page, so keep one open. What a book cannot do is make you perform. Here you write your own parafrasi and compare it, judge the register of every word before being told, and give Dante’s verses back from memory.

The interface is in Italian on purpose: it is vocabulary too. Turn Mostra inglese on in the level menu to see English under every label.

The rhyme chain. Dante’s tercets rhyme aba bcb cdc: each hands its middle rhyme to the next. Terzina draws your progress the same way. Each tercet of a canto is a link in the chain; passed ones turn gold, and “Terzina 4 di 45” always tells you where you are.

The maps. Each realm is drawn as the place it is: Hell a funnel of circles going down, Purgatory a mountain going up, Paradise heavens opening out. Your circle is marked sei qui, and “Riprendi” always takes you back to where you were.

The guardians. At the end of each canto a guardian waits: Charon, Minos, Cerberus and the others. Its trial tests what the canto taught. It is never a wall: you can try it early (prova subito), and losing costs nothing.

The day’s five. After 5 new tercets in a day, wherever you are in the poem, the day turns to review, each realm in its own way: in Hell the day goes, on the mountain the sun sets, and in Heaven the light grows more than eyes can take. The work then is reviewing your grimoire. Nothing locks; you can read on anyway.

On the mountain. Purgatory also has a rule of its own, taken from the poem: your most frequent mistakes on the way down become seven P’s on your forehead, and each terrace’s angel erases one. And nobody climbs at night: the sun sets after the day’s 5.

A tercet is miniato, illuminated like a manuscript, when it has been annotated by hand: today’s Italian line by line, the English, its grammar, and exercises. Only some of the poem is illuminated so far, and more is added over time. The maps show which cantos are illuminated, partly illuminated, or not yet, before you open them.

A tercet that is not yet illuminated still works: you can read it, hear it, open every word the shared glossary knows, and prove it by rebuilding a verse. With the book, you can also ask your guide to illuminate it on the spot.

Save any word from a verse and it goes into your grimoire, where it climbs through the three realms as you remember it. A word you miss goes back to the start. Reviews come due on their own schedule:

1. Selva oscura · today
2. Inferno · after 1 day
3. Purgatorio · after 3 days
4. Paradiso · after 7 days
5. Empireo · after 21 days

The number beside Grimorio at the top of the page is how many words are waiting for you today.

The recordings. Every tercet of the poem is read aloud: Inferno and Purgatorio by Virgil’s voice, Paradiso by Beatrice’s. They are synthetic voices, chosen by blind listening, and every recording was checked by transcribing it back against the text. A small number are being re-checked by a native speaker; if one sounds wrong to you, tell us.

The hand-written lessons are the authority. The AI (the guide’s conversation, verses illuminated on request, and pronunciation feedback) is there to go further, and like any AI it can be wrong. Anything generated rather than written is marked miniato dalla guida.

The AI costs money every time it answers, so each account has fair daily limits: about 40 messages to your guide, 10 verses illuminated and 30 pronunciation checks a day. Few people ever reach them. If you do, the guide says so; everything else, the lessons, trials and grimoire, stays open, and the limits reset at midnight UTC.

Always free, with or without an account: the whole poem to read and hear, the glossary, the maps, and Inferno I as a complete lesson with its guardian.

The book opens the rest: every other lesson, verses illuminated on request, your guide to talk with, and your pronunciation heard. It is $8, paid once, yours for good, like a book on your shelf. No subscription. If it is not for you, write within 7 days for a full refund. See the book · Terms of sale.

Without an account, your progress lives in this browser on this device, and nothing is sent to us. With an account (free), it is saved to the cloud and follows you to any device; if you used Terzina before signing in, that progress joins your account. Buying the book, and talking with your guide, need an account.

We use no advertising or tracking. What is kept, where, and how to delete it is in the Privacy policy.

Do I need to know Dante, or poetry?

No. Every word is glossed, every line has today’s Italian, and your guide explains the rest. You learn Dante as you go.

Will I learn old Italian instead of modern Italian?

You learn modern Italian through the old: every word is marked as still said (vivo), bookish (letterario) or gone (arcaico), with the word to use today. Counted over the annotated cantos, about three words in four are everyday Italian today.

What level do I need?

From A2 to C1. If you can order a coffee in Italian, you can start: the verses stay the same, and what each lesson asks of you grows with your level. Inferno I is free as a complete lesson, so you can find out before paying anything.

What is free, and what does the book cost?

Free, with or without an account: the whole poem to read and hear, the glossary, the maps, and Inferno I as a complete lesson. The book is $8, paid once, with no subscription: it opens every other lesson, verses illuminated on request, the guide to talk with, and pronunciation feedback.

Why can’t I open Capisci in this tercet?

It has not been illuminated yet (see above), or, beyond Inferno I, it is part of the book.

My guide stopped answering.

You may have reached today’s limit. It resets at midnight UTC.

Something else?

Write to support@terzina.app.