Ciao a tutti,
This is another FREE Italian grammar lesson from Learn Italian Manchester. This time we’re going to learn how to pronounce those – oh so different sounding words from the English. I hope you like the blog post.
Pronunciation
The Italian alphabet is fairly similar to our own (English, or depending on where you’re from, American). The letters K,J,W,X,Y occur only in foreign origin words. Each lesson will explain a few more letters. This week, I’ll explain the interesting letters (or combinations thereof) from this week’s words (above).
- gli
- The gli(followed or not by another vowel) in Italian is pronounced more or less as ll in Spanish. However there are words like glicine (flower name pronounced glee-chi-nah), negligente, anglicano in which, for etymological reasons, g and lare pronounced as two separate sounds as in English.Thus, the Italian word coniglio (rabbit) is pronounced like conihlyo. and the word conigli (rabbits) is pronounced like conihli.
- gn
- The gn is the same sound as Spanish ñ i.e. is the same sound as the ny pair in the word canyon.Thus, signore is pronounced like sin-yore.
- h
- The Italian h is always silent and as such an Italian speaker won’t pronounce it when it occurs in foreign origin words (e.g. hotel). Moreover the letter h in Italian occurs only in the groups ch and gh (see below) and in the present tense of the verb “to have”. Thus, ho ( [I] have ) is pronounced o and hanno ( [they] have) is pronounced anno, the same as the word anno(year).
- a, e, i, o, u
- The Italian vowels have only one sound, regardless of what letters they precede or follow, or accent marks on the vowel, with the (minor) exception of e and o.
- a
- The a is always pronounced as in the English word car.
- e
- The e has the sound of the e in bed. Actually there are two sounds of e:
- an OPEN one, indicated with the grave accent : è
- a CLOSED one, indicated with the acute accent : é
i The Italian i is the same as the English long e or ee as in see.
- o The o is always pronounced as the o in the word cold or dog. Here too actually there are two sounds of o:
-
- an OPEN one, indicated with the grave accent : ò (similar to dog)
- a CLOSED one, indicated with the acute accent : ó (similar to cold)
The same comments made above for the letter ehold.
- u
- The Italian u has the sound of the English oo as in too or the English ue as in blue.
- r
- As opposed to the English r, which is formed in the back of the mouth with the back of the tongue, the Italian r is formed using the tip of the tongue on the upper palate, behind the front teeth, more like the English d.
My name is Amedea, I’m Italian and I’m a Language tutor based in Manchester. If you’d like to learn italian as a second language there are several options to consider:
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