Phrases to Send Texts in Italian

xché --> perché

Note: This article was written by a previous contributor - Hannah Jackel. Hannah spent nine lovely months in Viterbo, Italy studying abroad, where she fell in love with the Italian language, culture and food.

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One of the first activities I participated in with my USAC cohort when I got to Italy was taking a mini field trip to the post office to get my hands on a PosteMobile cell phone.

At the time, I thought it was pointless to have a cell phone because I pessimistically believed that I wouldn’t make any friends and therefore would never have anyone to call or text. I planned to use my iPhone in places with WiFi to connect with the people at home, but I figured it would be good to have an Italian cell phone for emergencies.

Buying the PosteMobile was like stepping back into 2002. It was a simple bar phone, smaller than my hand, with a regular keypad and the capabilities to make calls, send texts and… that was pretty much it.

Oh, it had a number game on it too, kind of like Sudoku.

Having used a touch screen phone for a few years and phones with full QWERTY keyboards for years before that, I forgot what it was like to have to press 7 FIVE times to get ONE ‘s.’ It took a long time to send any kind of text, so I adapted to making phone calls to contact my friends.

(I did end up actually making friends, despite what I believed when I arrived.)

I didn’t learn the hip text slang until I came back to the U.S., but it sure would have come in handy.

Now, it just helps me understand what the heck my Italian Facebook friends are saying when they type things like “xché” or “mmt+.”

To help you out when it comes to keeping in touch with your Italian friends – both for shortening the time it takes to send a message and understanding what someone said, I put together a list of some common Italian text abbreviations.

CPF: Italians usually refer to a ‘text’ as an ‘SMS.’

SMS Abbreviazioni Italiani