Italian ( , or lingua
italiana) is a Romance
language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy
, and by a
total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland
, Italian is one of four official
language. It is also the official language of San Marino
, as well as the primary language of Vatican City
. Standard Italian, adopted by the state after
the unification of Italy, is
based on Tuscan (in particular on
the dialects of the city of Florence
) and is
somewhat intermediate between the Italo-Dalmatian languages of the South and the Gallo-Romance Northern Italian
languages. Its development was also influenced by the
other
Italian dialects and by the
Germanic language of the
post-Roman
invaders.
Italian derives diachronically from Latin and is the closest
national language to Latin. Unlike most other Romance languages,
Italian has retained the contrast between short and
long consonants which existed in Latin. As
in most
Romance languages,
stress is distinctive. In
particular, among the Romance languages, Italian is considered to
be the closest to
Latin in terms of
vocabulary.
Lexical
similarity is 89% with
French,
87% with
Catalan, 85% with
Sardinian, 82% with
Spanish, 78% with
Rhaeto-Romance and 77% with
Romanian.
Writing system
Italian is written in the
Latin
alphabet. The letters
J,
K,
W,
X and
Y are not considered part of the standard
Italian alphabet, but appear in
loanwords (such as
jeans,
whisky,
taxi).
X has become a commonly used letter in genuine Italian
words with the prefix
extra-.
J in Italian
is an old-fashioned orthographic variant of I, appearing
in the first name "Jacopo" as well as in some Italian place names,
e.g., the towns of Bajardo
, Bojano
, Joppolo
, Jesolo
, Jesi
, Ajaccio
, among
numerous others, and in the alternative spelling Mar Jonio
(also spelled Mar Ionio) for the Ionian Sea
. J may also appear in many words
from different dialects, but its use is discouraged in contemporary
Italian, and it is not part of the standard 21-letter contemporary
Italian alphabet. Each of these foreign letters has an Italian
equivalent spelling:
gi or
i for
j,
c or
ch for
k (including
chilometro for kilometer in prose),
u or
v for
w (depending on what sound it makes),
s,
ss, or
cs for
x, and
i for
y. (In informal Internet usage and texts,
it goes back the other way; for example,
ch is replaced
with
k.)
- Italian uses the acute accent over
the letter E (as in perché, why/because) to
indicate a front mid-closed vowel, and the grave accent (as in tè, tea) to
indicate a front mid-open vowel.
- The grave accent is also used on
letters A, I, O, and U to mark
stress when it falls on the
final vowel of a word (for instance gioventù, youth).
- Typically, the penultimate syllable is stressed.
- If syllables other than the last one are stressed, the accent
is not mandatory, unlike in Spanish, and, in virtually all cases, it is
omitted.
- When the word is potentially ambiguous, the accent is sometimes
used for disambiguation, for example prìncipi ("princes"),
but princìpi ("principles"), and è ("is"), but
e ("and").
- This is, however, not compulsory for polysyllabic words.
- Rare
words with three or more syllables can confuse Italians themselves,
and the pronunciation of Istanbul
is a common example of a word in which placement of
stress is not clearly established.
- Turkish, like French, tends to put the accent on the ultimate
syllable, but Italian doesn't.
- So we can hear "Istànbul" or "Ìstanbul".
- Another instance is the American State of
Florida
: the correct
way to pronounce it in Italian is as in Spanish, "Florìda", but
since there is an Italian word with the same meaning
("flourishing"), "flòrida", and because of the influence of
English, most Italians pronounce it that way.
- Dictionaries give the latter as an alternative
pronunciation.
- The letter H at the beginning of a word is used to
distinguish ho, hai, ha, hanno
(present indicative of avere, 'to have') from o
('or'), ai ('to the'), a ('to'), anno
('year').
- In the spoken language this letter is always silent in the
words given above, even though in ho it changes the
pronunciation making the vowel open.
- H is also used in combinations with other letters (see
below), but no phoneme exists in
Italian.
- In foreign words entered in common use, like "hotel" or
"hovercraft", the H is commonly silent, so they are pronounced
and
- The letter Z represents , for example:
zanzara (mosquito), or , for example: nazione
(nation), depending on context, though there are few minimal pairs.
- The same goes for S, which can represent or .
- However, these two phonemes are in complementary distribution
everywhere except between two vowels in the same word, and even in
that environment there are extremely few minimal pairs, so that
this distinction is being lost in many varieties.
- The letters c and g represent affricates: as in "chair" and as in "gem", respectively,
before the front vowels I and
E.
- They are pronounced as plosives , (as in
"call" and "gall") otherwise.
- Front/back vowel rules for C and G are
similar in French, Romanian, Spanish, and to some extent English (including Old English).
- Swedish and Norwegian have similar rules for
K and G.
- (See also palatalization.)
- However, an H can be added between C or
G and E or I to convert the preceding
consonant to a plosive, and an I can be added between
C or G and A, O or U
to signal that the consonant is an affricate.
- For example:
- {| class="wikitable"
- Note that the H is silent
in the digraphs CH and
GH, as also the I in
cia, cio, ciu and even cie is
not pronounced as a separate vowel, unless it carries the primary
stress. For example, it is silent in ciao and cielo , but it is pronounced in
farmacia and farmacie .
|
| Before back vowel (A, O, U) |
| Before front vowel (I, E) |
|
| Plosive |
| C |
| caramella |
| CH |
| china |
|
| G |
| gallo |
| GH |
| ghiro |
|
| Affricate |
| CI |
| ciaramella |
| C |
| Cina |
|
| GI |
| giallo |
| G |
| giro |
- There are three other special digraphs in Italian: GN, GL and SC.
- GN represents .
- GL represents only before i, and
never at the beginning of a word, except in the personal pronoun and definite article gli.
- (Compare with Spanish
ñ and ll, Portuguese nh and lh.)
SC represents fricative before i or
e.
- Except in the speech of some Northern Italians, all of these
are normally geminate between vowels.
- In general, there is a clear one-to-one correspondence between
letters or digraphs and phonemes; in standard varieties of Italian,
there is little allophonic variation.
- The most notable exceptions are assimilation of /n/ in point of
articulation before consonants, assimilatory voicing of /s/ to
following voiced consonants, and vowel length (vowels are long in
stressed open syllables – except at the end of words, and short
elsewhere) — compare with the enormous number of allophones of the English phoneme /t/.
- Spelling is mostly phonemic and usually difficult to mistake,
given a clear pronunciation.
- Exceptions exist, especially in foreign borrowings.
- There are fewer cases of dyslexia than
among speakers of languages such as English, and the concept of a
spelling bee is strange to
Italians.
History
The history of the Italian language is long, but the modern
standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent
events. The earliest surviving texts which can definitely be called
Italian (or more accurately, vernacular, as distinct from its
predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal
formulae from the region of Benevento dating from 960-963. What
would come to be thought of as Italian was first formalized in the
first years of the 14th century through the works of Dante Alighieri, who mixed southern Italian
languages, especially Sicilian,
with his native Tuscan in his epic poems known collectively as the
Commedia, to which Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed the
title Divina. Dante's much-loved works were read
throughout Italy and his written dialect became the "canonical
standard" that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is
still credited with standardizing the Italian language and, thus,
the dialect of Tuscany became the basis for
what would become the official language of Italy.
Italian was often an official language of the various Italian
states pre-dating unification, slowly usurping Latin, even when
ruled by foreign powers (such as the Spanish in the Kingdom of Naples, or the Austrians in the
Kingdom of
Lombardy-Venetia), even though the masses spoke primarily
vernacular languages and dialects. Italian was also one of the many
recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city since the
cities were, until recently, thought of as city-states. Those dialects now have considerable
variety, however. As
Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features
of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions
of Regional Italian. The most characteristic differences, for
instance, between Roman
Italian and
Milanese
Italian are the gemination of initial consonants and the
pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" in some cases (e.g.
va bene "all right": is pronounced by a Roman (and by any
standard-speaker, like a Florentine), by a Milanese (and by any
speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of La Spezia-Rimini Line); a
casa "at home": Roman and standard , Milanese and generally
northern ). (See Raddoppiamento
fonosintattico).
In
contrast to the Northern
Italian language, southern
Italian dialects and languages were largely untouched by the
Franco-Occitan influences
introduced to Italy, mainly by bards from
France
, during the Middle Ages
but, after the Norman conquest of southern Italy, Sicily became the
first Italian land to adopt Occitan lyric moods (and words) in
poetry. Even in the case of Northern Italian language,
however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of
outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages.
(See La Spezia-Rimini
Line).
The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time (Late Middle Ages), gave its dialect weight,
though Venetian language remained
widespread in medieval Italian commercial life. Also, the increasing
political and cultural relevance of Florence
during the periods of the rise of Medici's bank,
Humanism and the Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a
refined version of it, a standard in the arts.
Middle Ages
The re-discovery of Dante's De
vulgari eloquentia and a renewed interest in linguistics
in the 16th century sparked a debate which raged throughout Italy
concerning which criteria should be chosen to establish a modern
Italian standard to be used as much as a literary as a spoken
language. Scholars were divided into three factions:
the purists, headed by Pietro Bembo who in his Gli Asolani claimed that the language might
only be based on the great literary classics (notably, Petrarch and Boccaccio, but not Dante as Bembo
believed that the Divine Comedy was not dignified enough as it used
elements from non-lyric registers of the language), Niccolò Machiavelli and other
Florentine who preferred the version spoken by ordinary people
in their own times, and the courtiers like
Baldassarre Castiglione and
Gian Giorgio Trissino who
insisted that each local vernacular must contribute to the new
standard. A fourth faction claimed that the best variety of
Italian was the one that the papal court adopted. Eventually
Bembo's ideas prevailed, the result being the publication of the
first Italian dictionary in 1612 and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence
(1582-3), the official legislative body of the Italian
language.
Modern era
Two notable defining moments in the history of the Italian language
came between 1500 and 1850. Both events were invasions. The rulers
of Spain invaded and occupied Italy down to Rome and the Vatican in
the mid-16th century (see the aftermath of the Italian Wars). This occupation left a lasting
influence upon the formerly irregular Italian grammar, simplifying
it to conform more with the dominant Spanish language. The second
was the conquest and occupation of Italy by Napoleon in the early 19th century (who was himself
of Italian-Corsican descent). This conquest propelled the
unification of Italy and pushed the Italian language to a lingua franca, further reducing regional
languages in order to compensate for the increased united nature of
the people.
Contemporary times
Italian
literature's first modern novel, I
Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), by Alessandro Manzoni further defined the
standard by "rinsing" his Milanese "in the waters of the Arno
" (Florence's river), as he states in the Preface to his 1840
edition.
After unification a huge number of civil servants and soldiers
recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and
idioms from their home languages ("ciao" is
Venetian, "panettone" is in the Milanese dialect of the Lombard language etc.). Only 2.5% of
Italy’s population could speak standard Italian when the nation
unified in 1861.
Classification
Italian is most closely related to the other two Italo-Dalmatian
languages, Sicilian and the
extinct Dalmatian. The three are
part of the Italo-Western
grouping of the Romance languages,
which are a subgroup of the Italic
branch of Indo-European.
Geographic distribution
The geographic distribution of the
Italian language in the world: large Italian-speaking communities
are shown in green; light blue indicates areas where it was
understood for a while during the Italian military campaigns in
Africa in the first half of the 20th century .
The total speakers of Italian as a maternal language are between 70
and 80 million. The speakers who use Italian as a second or
cultural language are estimated at around 150 million.
Official:
Regional:
Significant:
Historically official:
Used by some immigrant communities in:
- 1,500,000
- 1,500,000
- 1,008,370
- 500,000-1,000,000
- 661,000
- 548,000
- 400,000
- 353,605
- 200,000
- 72,400
Speakers: Maternal language: 65 - 75 millionCultural language: c.
120-150 million
Italian
is the official language of Italy and San Marino, and one of the official languages of Switzerland, spoken mainly in the cantons of Ticino
and part of Graubünden
(Grigioni in Italian), which together are a region
referred to as Italian
Switzerland. It is also official language with Croatian
and Slovenian in some areas of Istria
, where an
Italian minority exists. It is the primary language of the Vatican City and is widely used and taught in Monaco
and Malta
. It
served as Malta's official language until the Maltese language was enshrined in the 1934
Constitution. It is also spoken to a significant extent in
France, with over 1,000,000 speakers (especially in Corsica
and the County of
Nice, areas that historically spoke Italian dialects before annexation to
France), and it is
understood by large parts of the populations of Albania
and coastal Montenegro
, reached by many Italian TV channels.
Italian
is also spoken by some in former Italian colonies in Africa (Libya
and Eritrea
). However, its use has sharply dropped off
since the colonial period. In Eritrea, Italian is widely understood . In fact, for
50 years, during the colonial period, Italian was the language of
education, but , there is only one Italian-language school
remaining, with 470 pupils. The name of the only Italian-language
school in Eritrea is Scuola Italiana di Asmara, which was also the
only Italian-language school in Ethiopia, when Eritrea was a
province of Ethiopia. The number of Italian speakers may increase a
little when the number of students at that school increases and
because it is still spoken in commerce [1942], and Eritrea will be the only African nation
where Italian is widely spoken and understood. In Libya, Italian
has been wiped out by the Libyan Revolution's Arabization programs
in education and media. In Egypt and Tunisia, it is mostly spoken
by Italian Egyptians and Italian Tunisians and some professionals
of non-Italian descent. In all of the above former Italian African
colonies, most of the fluent Italian speakers are people who grew
up in officially Italian-speaking nations, most especially Italy,
and returned to Africa.
Italian
and Italian dialects are widely
used by Italian immigrants and many of their descendants (see
Italians) living throughout
Western Europe (especially France, Germany
, Belgium
, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and
Luxembourg
), the United
States, Canada, Australia, and Latin America (especially Uruguay
, Brazil, Argentina
, and Venezuela
).
In the
United
States
, Italian speakers are most commonly found in five
cities: Boston
(7,000),
Chicago
(12,000), the Miami
region
(27,000), New York
City
(140,000), and Philadelphia
(15,000). According to the United States Census in
2000, over 1 million Italian
Americans spoke Italian at home, with the largest
concentrations (nearly half) found in the states of New York
(294,271) and New Jersey
(116,365).In Canada
, Italian is
the fourth most commonly spoken language, with 661,000 speakers (or
about 2.1% of the population) according to the 2006 Census.
Particularly large Italian-speaking
communities are found in Montreal
(c. 179,000) and Toronto
(c. 262,000).Italian is the second most
commonly spoken language in Australia, where 353,605 Italian Australians, or 1.9% of the
population, reported speaking Italian at home in the 2001 Census. In 2001 there were 130,000 Italian
speakers in Melbourne
, and 90,000 in Sydney
.
Italian language education
Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but
rarely as the first foreign language; in fact, Italian generally is
the fourth or fifth most taught foreign language in the
world.
In
anglophone parts of Canada, Italian
is, after French, the third most
taught language. In francophone
Canada it is third after English.
In the
United
States and the United Kingdom
, Italian ranks fourth (after Spanish-French-German and French-German-Spanish
respectively). Throughout the world, Italian is the fifth
most taught foreign language, after English, French, German, and Spanish.
In the
European Union, Italian is spoken as
a mother tongue by 13% of the population (65 million, mainly in
Italy itself) and as a second language by 3% (14 million); among EU
member states, it is most likely to be desired (and therefore
learned) as a second language in Malta (61%),
Croatia
(14%), Slovenia
(12%), Austria
(11%), Romania
(8%), France (6%), and
Greece
(6%). It is also an important second language in
Albania and Switzerland, which are not EU members or
candidates.
Influence and derived languages
From the late 19th to the mid 20th century, thousands of Italians
settled in Argentina, Uruguay, southern Brazil, and Venezuela,
where they formed a very strong physical and cultural presence (see
the Italian diaspora).
In some cases, colonies were established where variants of Italian dialects were used, and some
continue to use a derived dialect. An example is Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
, where
Talian is used, and in the town of Chipilo near Puebla, Mexico
; each
continuing to use a derived form of Venetian dating back to the 19th
century. Another example is Cocoliche, an Italian-Spanish pidgin once spoken in Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires
, and Lunfardo.
Rioplatense Spanish, and
particularly the speech of the city of Buenos Aires, has intonation
patterns that resemble those of Italian dialects, due to the fact
that Argentina has had a continuous large influx of Italian
settlers since the second half of the 19th century; initially
primarily from Northern Italy; then, since the beginning of the
twentieth century, mostly from Southern Italy.
Italian as a lingua franca
Starting in late medieval times, Italian
language variants replaced Latin to become the primary commercial
language in much of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea (especially
the Tuscan and Venetian variants). This was consolidated during the
Renaissance with the strength of Italian
and the rise of humanism in the
arts.
During the Renaissance, Italy held artistic sway over the rest of
Europe. All educated European gentlemen were expected to make the
Grand Tour, visiting Italy to see its
great historical monuments and works of art. It thus became
expected that educated Europeans would learn at least some Italian;
the English poet John Milton, for
instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian. In England,
Italian became the second most common modern language to be
learned, after French (though the
classical languages, Latin and Greek, came first). However, by the late 18th
century, Italian tended to be replaced by German as the second modern language in the
curriculum. Yet Italian loanwords continue
to be used in most other European
languages in matters of art and music. Within the Catholic church, Italian is known by a large
part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and is used in substitution
for Latin in some official documents.
The
presence of Italian as the primary language in the Vatican City indicates use, not only within the Holy See, but also throughout the world where an
episcopal seat is present. It continues to be used in
music and opera. Other
examples where Italian is sometimes used as a means of
communication is in some sports (sometimes in football and motorsports) and in the design and fashion
industries.
Dialects
In Italy, all Romance languages
spoken as the vernacular, other than standard Italian and other
unrelated, non-Italian languages, are termed "Italian dialects".
250 px
Many Italian dialects may be considered as historical languages in
their own right. These include recognized language groups such as
Friulian, Neapolitan, Sardinian, Sicilian, Venetian, and others, and regional
variants of these languages such as Calabrian. The distinction between
dialect and language has been made by scholars (such as Francesco Bruni): on the one hand are the
languages that made up the Italian koine; and on the other, those which had
very little or no part in it, such as Albanian, Greek, German,
Ladin, and Occitan, which are still spoken by
minorities.
Non-standard dialects are not generally used for mass communication
and are usually limited to native speakers in informal contexts. In
the past, speaking in dialect was often deprecated as a sign of
poor education. In parts of Italy, the younger generations tend to
speak standard Italian, rather than dialects, in all situations,
albeit usually with local accents and idioms. Regional differences
can be recognized by various factors: the openness of vowels, the
length of the consonants, and influence of the local dialect (for
example the contraction annà replaces andare in
the area of Rome for the infinitive "to go").
Sounds
Vowels
Italian has seven vowel phonemes: , , , , , ,
, represented by five letters: "a, e, i, o, u". The pairs - , and -
are seldom distinguished in writing and often confused, even though
most varieties of Italian employ both phonemes consistently.
Compare, for example standard "perché" (why, because) and "senti"
(you hear), as pronounced by most central and southern speakers,
with and , employed by most northern speakers. As a result, the
usage is strongly indicative of a person's origin. The standard
(Tuscan) usage of these vowels is listed in vocabularies, and
employed outside Tuscany mainly by specialists, especially actors
and very few (television) journalists.These are truly different
phonemes, however: compare (fishing) and
(peach), both spelled pesca ( ). Similarly ('barrel') and
('beatings'), both spelled botte, discriminate and (
).
In general, vowel combinations usually pronounce each vowel
separately. Diphthongs exist (e.g.
uo, iu, ie, ai), but are
limited to an unstressed u or i before or after a
stressed vowel.
The unstressed u in a diphthong approximates the English
semivowel w, and the unstressed i approximates
the semivowel y. E.g.: buono , ieri
.
Triphthongs exist in Italian as well,
like "continuiamo" ("we continue"). Three vowel
combinations exist only in the form semiconsonant ( or ), followed
by a vowel, followed by a desinence
vowel (usually ), as in miei, suoi, or two
semiconsonants followed by a vowel, as the group -uia-
exemplified above, or -iuo- in the word
aiuola.
Mobile diphthongs
Many Latin words with a short e or o have Italian
counterparts with a mobile diphthong (ie and uo
respectively). When the vowel sound is stressed, it is pronounced
and written as a diphthong; when not stressed, it is pronounced and
written as a single vowel.
So Latin focus gave rise to Italian fuoco
(meaning both "fire" and "optical focus"): when unstressed, as in
focale ("focal") the "o" remains alone. Latin pes
(more precisely its accusative form pedem) is the source
of Italian piede (foot): but unstressed "e" was left
unchanged in pedone (pedestrian) and pedale
(pedal). From Latin iocus comes Italian giuoco
("play", "game"), though in this case gioco is more
common: giocare means "to play (a game)". From Latin
homo comes Italian uomo (man), but also
umano (human) and ominide (hominid). From Latin
ovum comes Italian uovo (egg) and ovaie
(ovaries). (The same phenomenon occurs in Spanish: juego (play, game) and
jugar (to play), nieve (snow) and nevar
(to snow)).
Consonants
Two symbols in a table cell denote the voiceless and voiced
consonant, respectively.
Nasals undergo assimilation when followed by a consonant, e.g.,
when preceding a velar ( or ) only appears, etc.
Italian has geminate, or double, consonants, which are
distinguished by length. Length is
distinctive for all consonants except for , , , , which are always
geminate, and which is always single.Geminate plosives and
affricates are realised as lengthened closures. Geminate
fricatives, nasals, and are realized as lengthened continuants. The flap consonant is typically
dialectal. The correct standard pronunciation is .
Of special interest to the linguistic study of Italian is the
Gorgia Toscana, or "Tuscan
Throat", the weakening or lenitionof
certain intervocalicconsonants in Tuscan dialects. See also Syntactic doubling.
The voiced postalveolar
fricativeis only present in loanwords. For example,
garage.
Assimilation
Italian has few diphthongs, so most unfamiliar diphthongs that are
heard in foreign words (in particular, those beginning with vowel
"a", "e", or "o") will be assimilated as the corresponding diaeresis(i.e., the vowel sounds will be
pronounced separately). Italian phonotacticsdo not usually permit verbs and
polysyllabic nouns to end with consonants, excepting poetry and
song, so foreign words may receive extra terminal vowel
sounds.
Grammar
Common variations in the writing systems
Some variations in the usage of the writing system may be present
in practical use. These are scorned by educated people, but they
are so common in certain contexts that knowledge of them may be
useful.
- Usage of x instead of per: this is very
common among teenagers and in SMS
abbreviations. The multiplication operator is pronounced "per" in
Italian, and so it is sometimes used to replace the word "per",
which means "for"; thus, for example, "per te" ("for you") is
shortened to "x te" (compare with English "4 U"). Words containing
per can also have it replaced with x: for
example, perché (both "why" and "because") is often
shortened as xché or xké or x' (see
below). This usage might be useful to jot down quick notes or to
fit more text into the low character limit of an SMS, but it is
unacceptable in formal writing.
- Usage of foreign letters such as k, j and
y, especially in nicknames and SMS language: ke
instead of che, Giusy instead of
Giuseppina (or sometimes Giuseppe). This is
curiously mirrored in the usage of i in English names such
as Staci instead of Stacey, or in the usage of
c in Northern Europe
(Jacob instead of Jakob). The use of "k" instead
of "ch" or "c" to represent a plosive sound is documented in some
historical texts from before the standardization of the Italian
language; however, that usage is no longer standard in Italian.
Possibly because it is associated with the German language, the letter "k" has
sometimes also been used in satire to suggest that a political
figure is an authoritarian or even a "pseudo-nazi": Francesco Cossiga was famously nicknamed
Kossiga by rioting students during his tenure as minister
of internal affairs. [Cf. the politicized spelling
Amerika in the USA.]
- Use of the following abbreviations is limited to the electronic
communications media and is deprecated in all other cases:
nn instead of non (not),
cmq instead of comunque (anyway,
however), cm instead of come (how, like,
as), d instead of di (of),
(io/loro) sn instead of (io/loro) sono (I
am/they are), (io) dv instead of (io)
devo (I must/I have to) or instead of dove (where),
(tu) 6 instead of (tu) sei (you
are).
- Whenever ASCII characters are not available, or when they
cannot be relied on, for example in emails, sometimes accents are
replaced by apostrophes for convenience, such as in
perche' instead of perché (this was standard in
the days of manual typewriters that had no accents, and is still
common for upper case letters). Uppercase È is particularly rare, as it is absent from the
Italian keyboard layout, and
is very often written as E' (even though there are
several
ways of producing the uppercase È on a computer). This never
happens in books or other professionally typeset material. On the
other hand, many people confuse the grave and the acute accent, and
write perchè instead of perché or caffé
instead of caffè, since these two accents are usually
written in the same way in handwriting.
Examples
Conversation
Numbers
Days of the week
Sample texts
There is a recording of Dante's Divine Comedyread by Lino Pertileavailable at
http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/pdp/
See also
References and notes
Bibliography
- M. Vitale, Studi di Storia della Lingua Italiana, LED Edizioni
Universitarie, Milano, 1992, ISBN 88-7916-015-X
- S. Morgana, Capitoli di Storia Linguistica Italiana, LED
Edizioni Universitarie, Milano, 2003, ISBN 88-7916-211-X
External links
Consonants of Italian
|
| Bilabial |
Labio-
dental |
| Alveolar |
Post-
alveolar |
| Palatal |
| Velar |
|
| Nasal |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Plosive |
| , |
|
| , |
|
|
| , |
|
| Affricate |
|
|
| , |
| , |
|
|
|
| Fricative |
|
| , |
| , |
| , ( ) |
|
|
|
| Trill |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Lateral |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Approximant |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| English (inglese) |
Italian (italiano) |
Pronunciation |
|
| Yes |
Sì |
() |
|
| No |
No |
() |
|
| Of course! |
Certo! / Certamente! /
Naturalmente! |
|
|
| Hello! |
Ciao! (informal) / Salve! (general) |
() |
|
| Cheers! |
salute! |
|
|
| How are you? |
Come stai? (informal) / Come sta? (formal)
/ Come state? (plural) / Come va? (general) |
; |
|
| Good morning! |
Buon giorno! (= Good day!) |
|
|
| Good evening! |
Buona sera! |
|
|
| Good night! |
Buona notte! (for a good night sleeping) / Buona
serata! (for a good night awake) |
|
|
| Have a nice day! |
Buona giornata! (formal) |
|
|
| Enjoy the meal! |
Buon appetito! |
|
|
| Goodbye! |
Arrivederci (general) / Arrivederla (formal)
/ Ciao! (informal) |
() |
|
| Good luck! - Thank you! |
Buona fortuna! - Grazie! (general) / In
bocca al lupo! - Crepi [il lupo]! (to wish someone to
overcome a difficulty, similar to "Break a leg!"; literally: "Into
the mouth of the wolf!" - "May the wolf die!" |
|
|
| I love you |
Ti amo (between lovers only) / Ti voglio bene
(in the sense of "I am fond of you", between lovers, friends,
relatives etc.) |
; |
|
| Welcome [to...] |
Benvenuto/-i (for male/males or mixed) /
Benvenuta/-e (for female/females) [a / in...] |
|
|
| Please |
Per piacere / Per favore / Per cortesia |
() |
|
| Thank you! |
Grazie! (general) / Ti ringrazio! (informal)
/ La ringrazio! (formal) / Vi ringrazio!
(plural) |
() |
|
| You're welcome! |
Prego! |
|
| Excuse me / I'm sorry |
Mi dispiace (only "I'm sorry") / Scusa(mi)
(informal) / Mi scusi (formal) / Scusatemi
(plural) / Sono desolato ("I'm sorry", if male) / Sono
desolata ("I'm sorry", if female) |
() ; ; |
|
| Who? |
Chi? |
|
|
| What? |
Che cosa? / Cosa? / Che? |
|
|
| When? |
Quando? |
|
|
| Where? |
Dove? |
|
|
| How? |
Come? |
|
|
| Why / Because |
perché |
|
|
| Again |
di nuovo / ancora |
; |
|
| How much? / How many? |
Quanto? / Quanta? / Quanti? /
Quante? |
|
|
| What's your name? |
Come ti chiami? (informal) / Come si chiama?
(formal) |
|
|
| My name is ... |
Mi chiamo ... |
|
|
| This is ... |
Questo è ... (masculine) / Questa è ...
(feminine) |
|
|
| Yes, I understand. |
Sì, capisco. / Ho capito. |
|
|
| I do not understand. |
Non capisco. / Non ho capito. |
() |
|
| Do you speak English? |
Parli inglese? (informal) / Parla inglese?
(formal) / Parlate inglese? (plural) |
() |
|
| I don't understand Italian. |
Non capisco l'italiano. |
|
|
| Help me! |
Aiutami! (informal) / Mi aiuti! (formal)
/ Aiutatemi! (plural) / Aiuto! (general) |
|
|
| You're right/wrong! |
(Tu) hai ragione/torto! (informal) / (Lei) ha
ragione/torto! (formal) / (Voi) avete ragione/torto!
(plural) |
|
|
| What time is it? |
Che ora è? / Che ore sono? |
|
|
| Where is the bathroom? |
Dov'è il bagno? |
() |
|
| How much is it? |
Quanto costa? |
|
|
| The bill, please. |
Il conto, per favore. |
|
|
| The study of Italian sharpens the mind. |
Lo studio dell'italiano aguzza l'ingegno. |
|
|
| English |
Italian |
IPAIPA |
|
| One |
uno |
|
|
| Two |
due |
|
|
| Three |
tre |
|
|
| Four |
quattro |
|
|
| Five |
cinque |
|
|
| Six |
sei |
|
|
| Seven |
sette |
|
|
| Eight |
otto |
|
|
| Nine |
nove |
|
|
| Ten |
dieci |
|
|
| English |
Italian |
IPA |
|
| Eleven |
undici |
|
|
| Twelve |
dodici |
|
|
| Thirteen |
tredici |
|
|
| Fourteen |
quattordici |
|
|
| Fifteen |
quindici |
|
|
| Sixteen |
sedici |
|
|
| Seventeen |
diciassette |
|
|
| Eighteen |
diciotto |
|
|
| Nineteen |
diciannove |
|
|
| Twenty |
venti |
|
|
| English |
Italian |
IPA |
|
| Twenty-one |
ventuno |
|
|
| Twenty-two |
ventidue |
|
|
| Twenty-three |
ventitre |
|
|
| Twenty-four |
ventiquattro |
|
|
| Twenty-five |
venticinque |
|
|
| Twenty-six |
ventisei |
|
|
| Twenty-seven |
ventisette |
|
|
| Twenty-eight |
ventotto |
|
|
| Twenty-nine |
ventinove |
|
|
| Thirty |
trenta |
|
|
| English |
Italian |
IPA |
|
| Monday |
lunedì |
|
|
| Tuesday |
martedì |
|
|
| Wednesday |
mercoledì |
|
|
| Thursday |
giovedì |
|
|
| Friday |
venerdì |
|
|
| Saturday |
sabato |
|
|
| Sunday |
domenica |
|
)
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