Difference between revisions of "Language/Italian/Grammar/Italian-Alphabet"

In the Italian language stress cannot be guessed by diacritics like in Greek, Spanish or Portuguese. It does not even fall always on a specific syllable like in French (always on the last) or in Icelandic or Finnish (always on the first). Even if the tendence is to pronounce words with the stress on the last but one syllable, many commonly used words do not follow this rule. Plus, when a word ends with more than one vowel, it is always difficult to syllabize correctly so getting to now the "right stressed syllable" isn't useful. When learning Italian, I suggest you to always mark in written form the stressed vowel and to repeat it out loud once or twice.

 

- parole bisdrucciole: words with stress on the fourth syllable counting from the end. The Italian language also has words where the stress falls way back towards the starting syllables and still having other three syllables after them. These words are almost always conjugated verbs, sometimes with pronouns attached in the end (a graphic accent is not required for correct spelling). For example:

As you can see, only troncated words require a graphic accent (acute or gave), but in the middle of a word accents are almost never written, so it is quite difficult to guess where the stress falls in Italian. Many words follow a specific pattern that repeats itself, so it will be easier for some new words guessing their stress, but for many other it won't.

Italian words are usually composed of an alternation of consonants and vowels anding almost always with a vowel, like BANANA ('''c-v-c-v'''-c-v), PAROLA ('''c-v-c-v'''-c-v)

Sometimes you can find clusters from two to three consonants (very rarely a cluster of 4 consonants). They can be found at the beginning or in the middle of the word, like CREDERE ('''cc'''-v-c-v-c-v), STRADA ('''ccc'''-v-c-v) LABBRA (c-v-'''ccc'''-v), ATTRAVERSARE (v-'''ccc'''-v-c-v-'''cc'''-v-c-v) IGNOTO (v-'''cc'''-v-c-v) etc. INSTRADARE (v-'''cccc'''-v-c-v-c-v)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INFLORESC'''E'''NZA: we have the cluster NFL, looking for a vowel core after it: as a consonant accepts L between itself and the vowel core, F accepts L and O, while N gets separated and stays behind; R looks for the first E; SCE is the typical syllable for sound /ʃe/ and cannot be separated; cluster NZ cannot stick toghere since the first is not an S and the second is nor L or R, so they get separated and N stays behind while Z looks for its vowel core, that is to say A

CONT'''I'''NUO: C looks for the first O; NT gets separated so N stays with CO, while T looks for I; N looks for the following vowel core which is an ascending diphthong /wo/ so they stay together

PU'''O'''I: P looks for a vowel but finds three of them: this is a triphthong made of the ascending UO /wɔ/ and the discending OI /oi/ so it is a monosyllable

* PUOI

MAG'''I'''A: M looks for the following vowel A, G looks for the following vowel that seems to be a diphthong: however the stress is exactly on I so this creates a hiatus between it and A and must be separated (G will only take I)

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