Italian pronunciation



Italy is a beautiful country full of fantastic tradition, delicious cuisine, gorgeous women, impressive number of UNESCO world heritage sites, striking landscapes, trendy fashions, and a beautiful and melodious language, Italian.
 
Italian is highly spoken in the European Union in countries like Italy, Vatican City, Switzerland and San Marino, and in minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia (See Europe trips ). 
 
This Roman language is derived diachronically from Latin, and that is why both languages have similar vocabulary. However, it is not very different from the other Roman languages such as French, Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese.
 
Italian uses the seven-vowel system (a, ?, e, i, ?, o u) and 23 consonants. Its phonology is extremely conservative, and preserves many words of the Vulgar Latin.  The Italian pronunciation can be described by the follow vowels and consonants sounds tables.
 
Vowels and diphthongs
a ai au e è é ei eu
[a] [ai] [au] [e,ε] [ε] [e] [ei] [eu]
i ie o ò ó oi u uo
[i,j] [jε] [o,c] [c] [o] [oi] [u,w] [wc]

 
Consonants   
b c cc ch d f g gg gh gli
[b] [?,k] [?,k] [k] [d] [f] [?,g] [?:,g] [g] [?(:),gli]
gn h j K l m n p q Qu
[?(:)] ø [j,?,?] [k] [l] [m] [n] [p] [k] [kw]
r s sc t v w x y z  
[r] [s,z] [?,sk] [t] [v] [w,v] [ks] [i,j] [ts(:),dz(:)]  
 
 
Notes: c= [?] before i or e ; s= [z] between vowels ; g= [?] before i or e; sc= [?] before i or e , [sk] before a or u. A double consonant is a longer version of single consonant.
 
Italian has very melodious and emotionally-expressive sounds. That is why it is used in the opera and it does not matter if you do not know Italian, you will still understand the play. Italians love their language and they not only use it for communication, but they also use it to express all kinds of feelings and emotional states.