Help:IPA for Italian
The charts below show how the International Phonetic Alphabet represents pronunciations of Italian in Wikipedia articles.
See Italian phonology for a more thorough overview of the sounds of Italian. There is also an Italian pronunciation guide at Wiktionary.
To learn more about the correspondence between spelling and sounds, see Italian orthography.
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Notes
- ^ If consonants are doubled after a vowel, they are geminated: all consonants may be geminated except for /z/. In IPA, gemination is represented by doubling the consonant (fatto /ˈfatto/, mezzo /ˈmɛddzo/) or by using the length marker ⟨ː⟩. There is also the sandhi of syntactic gemination: va via /va vˈviːa/).
- ^ a b ⟨z⟩ represents both /ts/ and /dz/. The article on Italian orthography explains how they are used.
- ^ a b c d e /dz/, /ts/, /ʎ/, /ɲ/ and /ʃ/ are always geminated after a vowel.
- ^ a b c The nasals always assimilate their place of articulation to that of the following consonant. Thus, the n in /nɡ/~/nk/ is a velar [ŋ], and the one in /nf/~/nv/ is the labiodental [ɱ], but for simplicity, ⟨m⟩ is used here. A nasal before /p/, /b/ and /m/ is always the labial [m].
- ^ /h/ is usually dropped.
- ^ a b c In the Tuscan gorgia [h], [θ] and [ʒ] are the common allophones of vowel-following single /k/, /t/ and /dʒ/, respectively: matematica /mateˈmaːtika/ → [maθeˈmaːθiha], agitazione /adʒitatˈtsjoːne/ → [aʒiθatˈtsjoːne].
- ^ /θ/ is usually pronounced as [t] in English loanwords, commonly [dz], [z] (if spelled ⟨z⟩) or [s] (if spelled ⟨c⟩ or ⟨z⟩) in Spanish ones.
- ^ In Spanish loanwords, /x/ is usually pronounced as [h] or dropped. In German, Arabic and Russian ones, it is usually pronounced [k].
- ^ Italian contrasts seven monophthongs in stressed syllables. Open-mid vowels /ɛ ɔ/ can appear only if the syllable is stressed (coperto /koˈpɛrto/, quota /ˈkwɔːta/), close-mid vowels /e o/ are found elsewhere (Boccaccio /bokˈkattʃo/, amore /aˈmoːre/). Open and close vowels /a i u/ are unchanged in unstressed syllables, but word-final unstressed /i/ may become approximant [j] before vowels, which is known as synalepha (pari età /ˌparj eˈta/).
- ^ Open-mid [œ] or close-mid [ø] if it is stressed but usually [ø] if it is unstressed. May be replaced by [ɛ] (stressed) or [e] (stressed or unstressed).
- ^ /y/ is often pronounced as [u] or [ju].
- ^ Since Italian has no distinction between heavier or lighter vowels (like the English o in conclusion vs o in nomination), a defined secondary stress, even in long words, is extremely rare.
- ^ Stressed vowels are long in non-final open syllables: fato [ˈfaːto] ~ fatto [ˈfatto].
External links
- (Italian) Dizionario italiano multimediale e multilingue d'ortografia e di pronunzia (not based on IPA)
- (Italian) Dizionario di pronuncia italiana online by Luciano Canepari (based on IPA)
