Italian Sounds

• Vowels
• Italian has seven vowel phonemes: /a/, /e/, /ɛ/, /i/, /o/, /ɔ/, /u/. The pairs /e/-/ɛ/ and /o/-/ɔ/ are seldom distinguished in writing and often confused, even though most varieties of Italian employ both phonemes consistently. Compare, for example: "perché" [perˈkɛ] (why, because) and "senti" [ˈsenti] (you listen, you are listening, listen!), employed by some northern speakers, with [perˈke] and [ˈsɛnti], as pronounced by most central and southern speakers. As a result, the usage is strongly indicative of a person's origin. The standard (Tuscan) usage of these vowels is listed in vocabularies, and employed outside Tuscany mainly by specialists, especially actors and very few (television) journalists. These are truly different phonemes, however: compare /ˈpeska/ (fishing) and /ˈpɛska/ (peach), both spelled pesca (listen (help·info)). Similarly /ˈbotte/ ('barrel') and /ˈbɔtte/ ('beatings'), both spelled botte, discriminate /o/ and /ɔ/ (listen (help·info)).
• In general, vowel combinations usually pronounce each vowel separately. Diphthongs exist (e.g. uo, iu, ie, ai), but are limited to an unstressed u or i before or after a stressed vowel.
• The unstressed u in a diphthong approximates the English semivowel w, the unstressed i approximates the semivowel y. E.g.: buono [ˈbwɔno], ieri [ˈjɛri].
• Triphthongs exist in Italian as well, like "continuiamo" ("we continue"). Three vowel combinations exist only in the form semiconsonant (/j/ or /w/), followed by a vowel, followed by a desinence vowel (usually /i/), as in miei, suoi, or two semiconsonants followed by a vowel, as the group -uia- exemplified above, or -iuo- in the word aiuola. [25]
• Mobile diphthongs
• Many Latin words with a short 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 (a game)". 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.
• Consonants of Italian[26] Bilabial Labio-
• dental Alveolar Post-
• alveolar Palatal Velar
• Nasal m n ɲ
• Plosive p, b t̪, d̪ k, g
• Affricate t̪s̪, d̪z̪ tʃ, dʒ
• Fricative f, v s, z ʃ
• Trill r
• Lateral l ʎ
• Approximant j w
• Nasals undergo assimilation when followed by a consonant, e.g., when preceding a velar (/k/ or /g/) only [ŋ] appears, etc.
• 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. The flap consonant /ɾː/ is typically dialectal, and it is called erre moscia. The correct standard pronunciation is [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, so most unfamiliar diphthongs that are heard in foreign words (in particular, those beginning with vowel "a", "e", or "o") will be assimilated as the corresponding diaeresis (i.e., the vowel sounds will be pronounced separately). Italian phonotactics do not usually permit polysyllabic nouns and verbs to end with consonants, excepting poetry and song, so foreign words may receive extra terminal vowel sounds.