Language/Italian/Grammar/Accents
Hello everybody,
In today's lesson, we are going to speak about the Italian accentuation.
Why do I do this? Well, as many Italians make mistakes with the accents, it's probable that foreigners make mistakes, so I want to avoid this.
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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.
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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 ;) .
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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:
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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.