 |
|
|
|
This page contains some audio files. You can press this button here to test your sound settings. Read our help pages for more information in case our sound feature does not work for you.
|
Italian pronunciation
Vowels:
Look at the following table and listen to the audio examples to each word,
which will give you the correct pronunciation of the respective Italian sound.
You will notice that the vowels in Italian are a little different from the ones in English.
| sound/ letter: | | Italian Examples | English Examples | | a |  | grazie , stanza | master (brit.), rather | e | | penna, stasera | non-existent in English | | i | | sì , leggi | eel, Steven | | o | | giorno, alora | close to: owl, goal | | u | | tu , lunedì | school, fool |
Consonants:
The following table contains the pronunciation of a few consonants, which differ from their pronunciation in
English. Listen again to the audio-examples and try to repeat aloud, what you hear.
| sound/ letter: | | Italian Examples | English Examples | | c before e , i | | ciao , c'è | Czech Republic, Chimpanzee | | c otherwise | | campo, cosa | computer | | g before e , i | | giorno, gigolo | gel, giro transaction | | g with l, n | | gli, gnocci, bagno | million, ninja | | g otherwise | | grazie | go, big | | h | | hai, ho | mute | | sc before e , i | | scenda, prosciutto | like 'sh' in English | | z | | grazie , stanza | tzar, tsunami |
Capitalization
In Italian, all words are spelled with lower case letters.
The only exceptions are the names of people and animals, as well as names of locations and countries. Those
words are always capitalized.
Exercise
Can you tell which of the following words, after translating them into Italian, are capitalized and which are not?
Example:
the river
lower case
|
| the school | |
|
|
| America | |
|
|
| to run | |
|
|
| the room | |
|
|
| Tanja | |
|
|
| small | |
|
|
| eaten | |
|
|
|
|
|
Course 1
Lesson 1
Course 2
