Modern Italian Grammar: A Practical Guide, Third Edition (2013)

Appendix I. Spelling and pronunciation

Sounds and letters

It is often said that Italian is easy to learn, because it is spoken as it is written. This is not completely true, but certainly, compared with other languages such as English or French, Italian enjoys the advantage of a near ‘phonological’ system of spelling, in which each letter of the alphabet almost always corresponds to only one ‘sound’. Consequently it is usually easy to know how to pronounce an Italian word found in a written text, by simply following some straightforward general rules. The same is true when you need to write down words that you have heard in their spoken form.

However sounds and letters do not always correspond. There are some sounds (‘phonemes’) that are represented by two or three letters, for example [ʃ ] = sc; there are also some letters that can represent two different sounds, for example c can be either [k] as in ca or [T] as in ce.

The alphabet

The Italian alphabet is composed of twenty-one letters. Below, you will find a table showing the relationship between the written letters of the alphabet and the sounds of the spoken language. The table shows each letter, the way the letter is written in Italian, its symbol in the International Phonetics Association (IPA) alphabet, some examples of its use and, where necessary, notes on English words that use similar sounds, to help you with the pronunciation. Where there are no notes, the pronunciation of the letters is just the same as in English. Following the table there are a few practical tips on some difficulties of Italian pronunciation faced by native English speakers.

The letters j, k, w, x, y, shown after the main table, do not belong to the Italian alphabet, although they are often used to write words of foreign origin.

Foreign letters

Consonant clusters

Notes

1The letter ‘h’

The letter h does not represent any sound in Italian; it is not pronounced. It is used to distinguish different consonant sounds as in the case of c, g and sc before the vowels e and i. When followed by h, ‘c’ is pronounced [k] as opposed to [tʃ ], g is pronounced [g] rather than [j], ‘sc’ is pronounced [sk] rather than [ʃ].

2The letter ‘i’

The letter ‘i’ in the groups cia, cio, ciu; gia, gio, giu; scia, scio, sciu is not pronounced; it is a written way of representing the consonant sound.

3The consonants ‘s’ and ‘z’

Each of the two letters s and z corresponds to two different sounds: voiced [z] and [dz] and voiceless [s] and [ts] respectively. This distinction is not considered important by Italian speakers themselves. A few tips may however help in the pronunciation of the two different sounds of each letter:

4Open and closed vowels

Both e and o have two different sounds: open and closed. For example e has an open sound [ε] as in English pet and a closed sound [e] as in English hey! The letter o has open sound [ɔ] as in English or and a closed sound [o] as in English oh! Both open and closed sounds are represented in written Italian by the same letter e or o. The open vowels only occur in stressed syllables; when unstressed, vowels are always closed. The distinction between the two sounds is not very important in spoken Italian; Italians themselves may disagree on the ‘correct’ pronunciation of some words (especially when they speak different regional varieties of Italian).

Where necessary, the open and closed vowels can be distinguished by using the grave accent for the open sound è, ó and acute accent for the closed é, ϳ; many good dictionaries do this. However this is not done in normal written Italian, simply because usually the distinction is not considered very important.

Only in a few cases is the distinction important in avoiding confusion between two words. In such cases, the written language indicates the open vowel sound with an obligatory accent, as in, for example:

NOTE The letter h is silent in Italian. See note 1 above.

5The consonant groups ‘gl, gn, sc’

The sounds [ʎ], [ɲ], [ʃ] have no corresponding letters in the alphabet and are therefore represented in written Italian by groups of two or three letters (see table above). In the sc clusters with a, o, u, the letter i is not pronounced as a separate sound (see note 2 above). When these consonants are in the middle of a word their pronunciation is always strong (see note 6 below).

6Double consonants

‘Double’ or ‘strong’ consonants are a very common and frequent feature of the Italian language. Generally they are represented in writing by two letters (as in palla). In some cases however a consonant that is normally pronounced single is ‘reinforced’ and has a ‘strong’ sound in the spoken language, due to its position in the phrase. This happens in the case of consonants following certain monosyllabic words (particularly in central and southern varieties of Italian), as in:

Likewise, the consonant clusters gl [ʎ], gn [ɲ], sci [ʃ] are always given a ‘strong’ sound in the middle of a word, although this is not represented in writing:

Speakers of English as their mother tongue often find it difficult to reproduce exactly the sound of the Italian double consonants. It may help to know that a ‘strong’ consonant is always found after a short vowel, while the corresponding single consonant is always found after a long vowel, as in these examples:

7Accent marks

In addition to the cases above, the accent mark is also used to distinguish between words with the same vowel sounds, but different meanings:

Words with the stress on the last syllable are also written with an accent mark, as:

Italians have tended to have a fairly flexible attitude to (and occasional disagreements over) the question of whether accents should be grave or acute. In recent years, there has been a tendency to use the acute accent on all the closed vowels including a, i and u. Serianni (Grammatica Italiana, UTET, 1989) recommends adopting the grave accent for à, ì, ù while keeping the option of grave and acute only in the case of è/é and ò/ó where it is needed to distinguish between open and closed vowels. This is the system adopted here.

Stress

Sometimes, particularly in dictionaries and textbooks, accent marks are used to indicate on which syllable the stress falls, in words where there might be some doubt:

8Spelling conventions

On the whole, Italian spelling conventions follow English when it comes to capital letters. But note how Italian uses a capital letter for: