Tips For Italian Pronunciation

The Italian alphabet has almost the same letters as the English alphabet: ABCDIFGHILMNOPQRSTUVZ.

The vowels are AEIOU. Additional letters are JKWXY, used for foreign words or some words coming from Latin and Greek.

It is important to underline that in Italian language every sign as a sound especially the vowels. Italian come from Latin and Greek so if you know a little from these language it could be very useful for meanings and spelling.

Fixed pronunciation is for vowels, and the following consonants: BDFLMNPRSTVZ. They never change sound before other letters. The same is for vowels AEIOU. In the case of a double consonant the sound will be stronger.

The H doesn't produce any sound: it is used in two cases. 1) To distinguish some forms of the verb avere (to have) from other words with the same pronunciation (ha/a) 2) To change the sound of some consonant in a hard when followed by or I or E.

The C and G consonants can have a sweet sound if followed by I or E, otherwise the sound is always hard. The result is that CH and GH have an hard sound.

There are three consonantic phonemes absent in English. 1) The letter pair GN represents a sound similar to Spanish ñ in señor. 2) The letter pair GLI represents a sound similar to ll in million. 3) The letter pair QU represents a sound similar to ccu in accurate.