Italian language

Sounds

Vowels

Triphthongs always contain at least one semivowel: noia and febbraio have the sequence vowel-semivowel-vowel. In miei the first i is a semivocalic 'y' sound, [j]; in tuoi, the u functions as a [w]; and the final i of such words can become semivocalic before a following vowel in the next word. The i is a semivowel also in the first person plural of some verbs: continuiamo, dissanguiamo. And in the four-vowel sequence of aiuola ('flowerbed') the [j] is pushing out the "u" semivowel, [w], so nowadays aiola is the usual spelling. A similar process appears in words like mariuolo ('rascal') and legnaiuolo ('woodcutter'): almost everybody uses them (if at all) in the form mariolo, legnaiolo etc.

Mobile diphthongs

Many Latin words with a short stressed e or o have Italian counterparts with a mobile diphthong (ie and uo respectively). When the vowel sound is stressed, it is pronounced and written as a diphthong; when not stressed, it is pronounced and written as a single vowel.

So Latin focus gave rise to Italian fuoco (meaning both "fire" and "optical focus"): when unstressed, as in focale ("focal") the "o" remains alone. Latin pes (more precisely its accusative form pedem) is the source of Italian piede (foot): but unstressed "e" was left unchanged in pedone (pedestrian) and pedale (pedal). From Latin iocus comes Italian giuoco ("play", "game"), though in this case gioco is more common: giocare means "to play". From Latin homo comes Italian uomo (man), but also umano (human) and ominide (hominid). From Latin ovum comes Italian uovo (egg) and ovaie (ovaries). (The same phenomenon occurs in Spanish: juego (play, game) and jugar (to play), nieve (snow) and nevar (to snow)).

Consonants

Two symbols in a table cell denote the voiceless and voiced consonant, respectively.

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar
Plosive	p, b		t̪, d̪				k, g
Nasal	m		n̪			ɲ
Trill				r
Flap				ɾ
Fricative		f, v		s, z	ʃ
Affricate				ʦ, ʣ	ʧ, ʤ
Lateral				l		ʎ

The phoneme /n/ undergoes assimilation when followed by a consonant, e.g., when followed by a velar (/k/ or /g/) it is pronounced [ŋ], etc.

Italian plosives are not aspirated (unlike in English). Italian speakers hear the difference as a foreign accent.

Italian has geminate, or double, consonants, which are distinguished by length. Length is distinctive for all consonants except for /ʃ/, /ʦ/, /ʣ/, /ʎ/ /ɲ/, which are always geminate, and /z/ which is always single. Geminate plosives and affricates are realised as lengthened closures. Geminate fricatives, nasals, and /l/ are realized as lengthened continuants. Geminate /ɾː/ is realised as the trill [r].

Of special interest to the linguistic study of Italian is the Gorgia Toscana, or "Tuscan Throat", the weakening or lenition of certain intervocalic consonants in Tuscan dialects. See also Syntactic doubling.

Assimilation

Italian has few diphthongs, and so most unfamiliar diphthongs heard in foreign words (in particular, those with a first vowel that is not "i" or "u", or a first vowel that is stressed), will be assimilated as the corresponding diaeresis (i.e., the vowel sounds will be pronounced separately). Italian phonotactics do not usually permit nouns and verbs to end with consonants, excepting poetry and song, so foreign words may receive extra terminal vowel sounds.

Writing system

File:Jon Hawk.jpg

Example of Italian

${\mathfrak {N}}$el mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
che la diritta via era smarrita.
Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura!
Tant'è amara che poco è più morte;
ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,
dirò de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte.
(Dante Alighieri), La Divina Commedia, Inferno, I, 1-9, 1304-1307 AD

${\mathfrak {T}}$utti li stati, tutti e' dominii che hanno avuto et hanno imperio sopra li uomini, sono stati e sono o repubbliche o principati. E' principati sono o ereditarii, de' quali el sangue del loro signore ne sia suto lungo tempo principe, o e' sono nuovi. E' nuovi, o sono nuovi tutti, come fu Milano a Francesco Sforza, o sono come membri aggiunti allo stato ereditario del principe che li acquista, come è el regno di Napoli al re di Spagna. Sono questi dominii così acquistati, o consueti a vivere sotto uno principe, o usi ad essere liberi; et acquistonsi, o con le armi d'altri o con le proprie, o per fortuna o per virtù.
(Niccolò Machiavelli), Principe, Ch. 1, 1513 AD

${\mathfrak {Q}}$uel ramo del lago di Como, che volge a mezzogiorno, tra due catene non interrotte di monti, tutto a seni e a golfi, a seconda dello sporgere e del rientrare di quelli che, vien, quasi a un tratto, a ristringersi, e a prender corso e figura di fiume, tra un promontorio a destra, e un'ampia costiera dall'altra parte; e il ponte, che ivi congiunge le due rive, par che renda ancor più sensibile all'occhio questa trasformazione, e segni il punto in cui il lago cessa, e l'Adda ricomincia, per ripigliar poi il nome di lago dove le rive, allontanandosi di nuovo, lascian l'acqua distendersi e rallentarsi in nuovi golfi e nuovi seni.
(Alessandro Manzoni), I promessi sposi, Ch.1, 1840 AD

Italian is written using the Latin alphabet. The letters J, K, W, X and Y are not considered part of the standard Italian alphabet, but appear in loanwords (such as jeans, whisky, taxi). X has become a commonly used letter in genuine Italian words with the prefix extra-. J in Italian is an old-fashioned orthographic variant of I, appearing in the first name "Jacopo" as well as in some Italian place names, e.g., the towns of Bajardo, Bojano, Joppolo, Jesolo, Jesi, among numerous others, and in the alternate spelling Mar Jonio (also spelled Mar Ionio) for the Ionian Sea. J may also appear in many words from different dialects, but its use is discouraged in contemporary Italian, and it is not part of the standard 21-letter contemporary Italian alphabet. Each of these foreign letters had an Italian equivalent spelling: gi for j, c or ch for k, u or v for w (depending on what sound it makes), cs or s for x, and i for y.

• Italian uses the acute accent over the letter E (as in perché, why/because) to indicate a front mid-close vowel, and the grave accent (as in tè, tea) to indicate a front mid-open vowel. The grave accent is also used on letters A, I, O, and U to mark stress when it falls on final vowel of a word (for instance gioventù, youth). Typically, the penultimate syllable is stressed. If syllables other than the last one are stressed, the accent is not mandatory, unlike in Spanish, and, in virtually all cases, it is omitted. In some cases, when the word is ambiguous (as principi), the accent mark is sometimes used in order to disambiguate its meaning (in this case, prìncipi, princes, or princìpi, principles). This is however not compulsory. Rare words with three or more syllables can confuse Italians themselves, and the pronunciation of Istanbul is a common example of a word in which placement of stress is not clearly established. Another instance is the American State of Florida: the correct way to pronounce it in Italian is like in Spanish, "Florìda", but since there is an Italian word meaning the same ("flourishing"), "flòrida", and because of the influence of English, many Italians pronounce it that way.

• The letter H at the beginning of a word is used to distinguish ho, hai, ha, hanno (present indicative of avere, 'to have') from o ('or'), ai ('to the'), a ('to'), anno ('year'). In the spoken language this letter is always silent for the cases given above. H is also used in combinations with other letters (see below), but no phoneme [h] exists in Italian. In foreign words entered in common use, like "hotel" or "hovercraft", the H is commonly silent. You commonly pronounce them as /oˈtɛl/ and /ˈɔverkraft/

• The letter Z represents /ʣ/, for example: Zanzara /dzan'dzaɾa/ (mosquito), or /ʦ/, for example: Nazione /naˈttsjone/ (nation), depending on context, though there are few minimal pairs. The same goes for S, which can represent /s/ or /z/. However, these two phonemes are in complementary distribution everywhere except between two vowels in the same word, and even in such environment there are extremely few minimal pairs, so that this distinction is being lost in many varieties.

• The letters C and G represent affricates: /ʧ/ as in "chair" and /ʤ/ as in "gem", respectively, before the front vowels I and E. They are pronounced as plosives /k/, /g/ (as in "call" and "gall") otherwise. Front/back vowel rules for C and G are similar in French, Romanian, Spanish, and to some extent English (including Old English). Swedish and Norwegian have similar rules for K and G. (See also palatalization.)

• However, an H can be added between C or G and E or I to represent a plosive, and an I can be added between C or G and A, O or U to signal that the consonant is an affricate. For example:

	Before back vowel (A, O, U)		Before front vowel (I, E)
Plosive	C	caramella /kaɾaˈmɛlla/	CH	china /ˈkina/
	G	gallo /ˈgallo/	GH	ghiro /ˈgiro/
Affricate	CI	ciaramella /ʧaɾaˈmɛlla/	C	Cina /ˈʧina/
	GI	giallo /ˈʤallo/	G	giro /ˈʤiro/

Note that the H is silent in the digraphs CH and GH, as also the I in cia, cio, ciu and even cie is not pronounced as a separate vowel, unless it carries the primary stress. For example, it is silent in ciao /ˈʧa.o/ and cielo /ˈʧɛ.lo/, but it is pronounced in farmacia /ˌfaɾ.ma.ˈʧi.a/ and farmacie /ˌfaɾ.ma.ˈʧi.e/.

• There are three other special digraphs in Italian: GN, GL and SC. GN represents /ɲ/ and GL represents /ʎ/ only before i, and never at the beginning of a word, except in the personal pronoun and definite article gli. (Compare with Spanish ñ and ll, Portuguese nh and lh.) SC represents fricative /ʃ/ before i or e. Except in the speech of some Northern Italians, all of these are normally geminate between vowels.

• In general, all letters or digraphs represent phonemes rather clearly, and in standard varieties of Italian, there is little allophonic variation. The most notable exceptions are assimilation of /n/ in point of articulation before consonants, assimilatory voicing of /s/ to following voiced consonants, and vowel length (vowels are long in stressed open syllables, and short elsewhere) — compare with the enormous number of allophones of the English phoneme /t/. Spelling is clearly phonemic and difficult to mistake given a clear pronunciation. Exceptions are generally only found in foreign borrowings. There are fewer cases of dyslexia than among speakers of languages such as English Template:Fact, and the concept of a spelling bee is strange to Italians.

Common variations in the writing systems

Some variations in the usage of the writing system may be present in practical use. These are scorned by educated people, but they are so common in certain contexts that knowledge of them may be useful.

• Usage of x instead of per: this is very common among teenagers and in SMS abbreviations. The multiplication operator is pronounced "per" in Italian, and so it is sometimes used to replace the word "per", which means "for"; thus, for example, "per te" ("for you") is shortened to "x te" (compare with English "4 U"). Words containing per can also have it replaced with x: for example, perché (both "why" and "because") is often shortened as xché or xké or x' (see below). This usage might be useful to jot down quick notes or to fit more text into the low character limit of an SMS, but it is considered unacceptable in formal writing.
• Usage of foreign letters such as k, j and y, especially in nicknames and SMS language: ke instead of che, Giusy instead of Giuseppina (or sometimes Giuseppe). This is curiously mirrored in the usage of i in English names such as Staci instead of Stacey, or in the usage of c in Northern Europe (Jacob instead of Jakob). The use of "k" instead of "ch" or "c" to represent a plosive sound is documented in some historical texts from before the standardization of the Italian language; however, that usage is no longer standard in Italian. Possibly because it is associated with the German language, the letter "k" has sometimes also been used in satire to suggest that a political figure is an authoritarian or even a "pseudo-nazi": Francesco Cossiga was famously nicknamed Kossiga by rioting students during his tenure as minister of internal affairs. [Cf. the politicized spelling Amerika in the USA.]
• Usage of other abbreviations: nn instead of non (not), cmq instead of comunque (anyway, however), cm instead of come (how, like, as), d instead of di (of), (io/loro) sn instead of (io/loro) sono (I am/they are), (io) dv instead of (io) devo (I must/I have to) or instead of dove (where), (tu) 6 instead of (tu) sei (you are).
• Inexperienced typists often replace accents with apostrophes, such as in perche' instead of perché. Uppercase È is particularly rare, as it is absent from the Italian keyboard layout, and is very often written as E' (even though there are several ways of producing the uppercase È on a computer). This never happens in books or other professionally typeset material.
• Few are aware of the distinction between grave and acute accents, so it is also common to see perchè. Modern word processing systems, however, tend to correct this mistake (unlike the previous one).