Language/Italian/Grammar/Accents

Ciao a tutti! 🇮🇹

In today's lesson, we are going to dive into the world of Italian accentuation. Why is this important? Well, even many native Italians make mistakes with accents, so it's highly likely that learners of the language will encounter some challenges as well. Our goal is to help you avoid these common pitfalls and improve your overall understanding of Italian grammar.

After mastering the topic of accents, you might also be interested in exploring other related aspects of Italian grammar, such as Italian plurals, Italian adjectives, and the simple past subjunctive tense. These lessons will further enhance your knowledge and proficiency in the beautiful Italian language. Buona fortuna! 😊

Accents

So let's start. In Italian the vowels are:

a, e, i, o, u.

And the respective accents are: à, è/é, ì, ò, ù.

We write them only if the word is accented on the last syllable; some words, which are monosyllabic, do not follow this rule.

.

Let's make some examples : verità, civiltà, università (from the Latin versions: veritas, civitas and universitas).

Bignè, caffè, perché, affinché. (Bignè is from the French "Bignet") è pronunciation is "ε" and the é one is "e".

Lì, poltrì, dormì (lì: Adv) (poltrì and dormì are conjugations of "poltrire" and "dormire").

Formò, raccontò, però (ò pronunciation is an open o) (conjugations of "formare" and "raccontare").

Tribù, virtù (from the Latin versions "tribus" and "virtus").

P.S: you can easily find the differences on the web and on the dictionaries ;) .

.

Exceptions

Some words which do not follow this rule are:

Su, qui, qua, di, da, ho, ha, tra, fra and many others (most of all prepositions).

Then, there some homophonic words which have different writings belong to the meaning:

.

Examples are :

di, dì, di' (the last has got an apostrophe). The meanings are: "of", "day" and "say (imperative form)".

da, dà, da'. Meanings: "from", "he gives" and "give (imperative form)".

Then, there are many others.

Thanks to everyone.

Author

Edoboriscuc

Other Lessons

• How to Use Have
• Nouns
• Questions
• Conditional Mood
• When use LI and GLI
• Negation
• Conditional Tense
• Definite Articles
• Definite Articles in Italian
• Prepositions