The phonology of Italian describes the sound system—the phonology and phonetics—of standard Italian and its geographical variants.
Consonants + Consonant phonemes Labial Dental/alveolar Post-alveolar/palatal Velar Nasal Stop Affricate Fricative () Approximant Lateral Trill
Notes:
Between two vowels, or between a vowel and an approximant () or a liquid (), consonants can be both singleton or geminate. Geminate consonants shorten the preceding vowel (or block phonetic lengthening) and the first element of the geminate is unreleased. For example, compare ('fate') with ('fact' or 'did'/'done').Additional minimal pairs include ano/anno, papa/pappa, note/notte, sete/sette, vale/valle, belo/bello, fate/fatte, casa/cassa, caro/carro. However, , , , , are always geminate intervocalically, including across word boundaries. Similarly, nasals, liquids, and sibilants are pronounced slightly longer in medial consonant clusters. , , and are the only consonants that cannot be geminated. are laminal denti-alveolar , commonly called "dental" for simplicity. are pre-velar before . have two variants: Dentalized laminal alveolar (commonly called "dental" for simplicity), pronounced with the blade of the tongue very close to the upper front teeth, with the tip of the tongue resting behind lower front teeth. Non-retracted apical alveolar . The stop component of the "apical" affricates is actually laminal denti-alveolar. are apical alveolar in most environments. are laminal denti-alveolar before and palatalized laminal postalveolar before . is velar before . and do not contrast before and , where they are pronounced and , respectively. and are alveolo-palatal. In a large number of accents, is a fricative ."(...) in a large number of Italian accents, there is considerable friction involved in the pronunciation of , creating a voiced palatal lateral fricative (for which there is no established IPA symbol)" . Intervocalically, single is realised as a trill with one or two contacts. Some literature treats the single-contact trill as a tap .Luciano Canepari, A Handbook of Pronunciation, chapter 3: «Italian». Single-contact trills can also occur elsewhere, particularly in unstressed syllables.Romano, Antonio. "A preliminary contribution to the study of phonetic variation of in Italian and Italo-Romance." Rhotics. New data and perspectives (Proc. of’r-atics-3, Libera Università di Bolzano (2011): 209–226, pp. 213–214. Geminate manifests as a trill with three to seven contacts. The phonemic distinction between and is neutralized before consonants and at the beginning of words: the former is used before voiceless consonants and before vowels at the beginning of words; the latter is used before voiced consonants. The two can contrast only between vowels within a word, e.g. fuso 'melted' versus fuso 'spindle'. According to Canepari, although, the traditional standard has been replaced by a modern neutral pronunciation which always prefers when intervocalic, except when the intervocalic s is the initial sound of a word, if the compound is still felt as such: for example, presento ('I foresee', with pre- meaning 'before' and sento meaning 'I perceive') vs presento ('I present'). There are many words for which dictionaries now indicate that both pronunciations, either or , are acceptable. Word-internally between vowels, the two phonemes have merged in many regional varieties of Italian, as either (northern-central) or (southern-central).
Vowels
+ Vowel phonemes Front Central Back Close Close-mid Open-mid Open
In Italian phonemic distinction between long and short vowels is rare and limited to a few words and one morphological class, namely the pair composed by the first and third person of the historic past in verbs of the third conjugation—compare sentii (, "I felt/heard'), and sentì (, "he felt/heard").
Normally vowels in stressed open syllables, unless word-final, are long at the end of the intonational phrase (including isolated words) or when emphasized. Adjacent identical vowels found at morpheme boundaries are not resyllabified, but pronounced separately ("quickly rearticulated"), and they might be reduced to a single short vowel in rapid speech.
Although Italian contrasts close-mid () and open-mid () vowels in stressed syllables, the distinction is neutralised in unstressed position in which only the close-mid vowels occur. The height of such vowels in unstressed position is context-sensitive; they are somewhat lowered () in the vicinity of more open vowels. The distinction between close-mid and open-mid vowels is lost entirely in a few southern varieties of Regional Italian, especially in northern Sicily (e.g. Palermo), where they are realized as open-mid , as well as in some northern varieties (in particular in Piedmont), where they are realized as mid .
Word-final stressed is found in a small number of words: però, ciò, paltò. However, as a productive morpheme, it marks the first person singular of all future tense verbs (e.g. dormirò 'I will sleep') and the third person singular preterite of first conjugation verbs (parlò 's/he spoke', but credé 's/he believed', dormì 's/he slept'). Word-final unstressed is rare, found in onomatopoeic terms (babau), loanwords (guru), and place or family names derived from the Sardinian language (Gennargentu, Porcu).
When the last phoneme of a word is an unstressed vowel and the first phoneme of the following word is any vowel, the former vowel tends to become non-syllabic. This phenomenon is called synalepha and should be taken into account when counting syllables, e.g. in poetry.
In addition to monophthongs, Italian has diphthongs, which, however, are both phonemically and phonetically simply combinations of the other vowels. Some are very common (e.g. ), others are rarer (e.g. ) and some never occur within native Italian words (e.g. ). However, none of the diphthongs are considered to have distinct phonemic status since their constituents do not behave differently from how they occur in isolation, unlike the diphthongs in other languages such as English and German. Grammatical tradition distinguishes 'falling' from 'rising' diphthongs, but since rising diphthongs are composed of one semiconsonantal sound or and one vowel sound, they are not actually diphthongs. The practice of referring to them as 'diphthongs' has been criticised by phoneticians such as Luciano Canepari.
Phonotactics
Onset Italian allows up to three consonants in syllable-initial position, although there are limitations:
CC + any voiceless stop or . E.g. spavento ('fright') + any voiced stop, . E.g. srotolare ('unroll') , or any stop + . E.g. frana ('landslide') , or any stop except + . E.g. platano ('planetree') , or any stop or nasal + . E.g. fiume ('river'), vuole ('he/she wants'), siamo ('we are'), suono ('sound') In words of foreign origin (mostly Greek), which are only partially assimilated, other combinations such as (e.g. pneumatico), (e.g. mnemonico), (e.g. tmesi), and (e.g. pseudo-) occur. As an onset, the cluster + voiceless consonant is inherently unstable. Phonetically, word-internal s+C normally syllabifies as 'toad', (neighborhood of Rome). Phonetic syllabification of the cluster also occurs at word boundaries if a vowel precedes it without pause, e.g. 'the history', implying the same syllable break at the structural level, ,Luciano Canepari, A Handbook of Pronunciation, Chapter 3: "Italian", pp. 135–36 thus always latent due to the extrasyllabic , but unrealized phonetically unless a vowel precedes."acoustic data confirm the fact that (after a pause, or 'silence') is part of the same syllable (a little particular, possibly, on the scale of syllabicity, but nothing really surprising) whereas, obviously, constitute two phono-syllables bordering between two C" Luciano Canepari, A Handbook of Pronunciation, Chapter 3: "Italian", p. 136. A competing analysis accepts that while the syllabification is accurate historically, modern retreat of i-prosthesis before word initial +C (e.g. erstwhile con isforzo 'with effort' has generally given way to con sforzo) suggests that the structure is now underdetermined, with occurrence of or variable "according to the context and the idiosyncratic behaviour of the speakers."
CCC
+ voiceless stop or + . E.g. spregiare ('to despise') + voiced stop + . E.g. sbracciato ('with bare arms'), sdraiare ('to lay down'), sgravare ('to relieve') . E.g. splendido ('splendid') . E.g. sclerosi ('sclerosis') . E.g. sbloccato ('unblocked') or any stop + . E.g. priego (antiquated form of prego 'I pray'), proprio ('(one's) own' / proper / properly), pruovo (antiquated form of provo 'I try') or any stop or nasal + . E.g. quieto ('quiet'), continuiamo ('we continue') The last combination is however rare and one of the approximants is often vocalised, e.g. quieto , continuiamo
Nucleus The nucleus is the only mandatory part of a syllable (for instance, a 'to, at' is a word) and must be a vowel or a diphthong. In a falling diphthong the most common second elements are or but other combinations such as idea , trae may also be interpreted as diphthongs. Combinations of with vowels are often labelled diphthongs, allowing for combinations of with falling diphthongs to be called triphthongs. One view holds that it is more accurate to label as consonants and as consonant-vowel sequences rather than rising diphthongs. In that interpretation, Italian has only falling diphthongs (phonemically at least, cf. Synaeresis) and no triphthongs. + Nucleus VP2 VP1 VC VDVPVCVCVDVC - - - - - - ()() - - - - - - -
Coda Italian permits a small number of coda consonants. Outside of loanwords, the permitted consonants are:
The first element of any geminate, e.g. tutto ('everything'), avvertire ('to warn'). A nasal consonant that is either (word-finally) or one that is homorganic to a following consonant. E.g. Con ('with'), un poco ('a little'), ampio ('ample'). Liquid consonants and . E.g. per ('for'), alto ('high'). (although not before fricatives). E.g. pesca ('peach'); but asfalto ('asphalt').
There are also restrictions in the types of syllables that permit consonants in the syllable coda. explains that neither geminates, nor coda consonants with "rising sonority" can follow falling diphthongs. However, "rising diphthongs" (or sequences of an approximant and a following vowel) may precede clusters with falling sonority, particularly those that stem historically from an obstruent+liquid onset. For example:Examples come from
biondo ('blond') chiosco ('kiosk') chiostro ('cloister') chioccia ('broody hen') fianco ('hip')
Syntactic gemination
Word-initial consonants are geminated after certain vowel-final words in the same prosodic unit. There are two types of triggers of initial gemination: some unstressed particles, prepositions, and other monosyllabic words, and any oxytonic polysyllabic word. As an example of the first type, casa ('house') is pronounced but a casa ('homeward') is pronounced . This is not a purely phonological process, as no gemination is cued by the la in la casa 'the house' , and there is nothing detectable in the structure of the preposition a to account for the gemination. This type normally originates in language history: modern a, for example, derives from Latin AD, and today's geminate in is a continuation of what was once a simple assimilation. Gemination cued by final stressed vowels, however, is transparently phonological. Final stressed vowels are short by nature; if a consonant follows a short stressed vowel the syllable must be closed, thus the consonant following the final stressed vowel is drawn to lengthen: parlò portoghese 's/he spoke Portuguese' vs. parla portoghese 's/he speaks Portuguese'.
To summarize, syntactic gemination occurs in standard Italian mainly in the following two cases:thebigbook-2ed, p. 111