Italian alphabet

Italian language
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The Italian alphabet is a variant of the Latin alphabet used by the Italian language. The standard contemporary Italian alphabet has 21 letters, shown in the table below.

Vowels

The Italian alphabet has five vowel letters, ‹a e i o u›. Of those, only ‹a› represents one sound value while each of the others has two. In addition, ‹e› and ‹i› indicate a different pronunciation of a preceding ‹c› or ‹g› (see below).

In stressed syllables, ‹e› represents both open /ɛ/ and close /e/. Similarly, ‹o› represents both open /ɔ/ and close /o/ (see the Italian phonology for further details on these sounds). There is typically no orthographic distinction between the open and closed sounds represented, though accent marks are used in certain instances (see below). In unstressed syllables, only the close variants occur.

In addition to representing the respective vowels /i/ and /u/, ‹i› and ‹u› also typically represent the semivowels /j/ and /w/, respectively, when unstressed and occurring before another vowel. Many exceptions exist (e.g. attuale, deciduo, deviare, dioscuro, fatuo, iato, inebriare, ingenuo, liana, proficuo, riarso, viaggio). Unstressed ‹i› may represent that a preceding or following ‹c› or ‹g› is "soft" (dolce).

C and G

Normally, ‹c› and ‹g› represent the plosives /k/ and /ɡ/, respectively, unless they precede a front vowel (‹i› or ‹e›) when they represent the affricates /tʃ/ (like English ch) and /dʒ/ (like English j).

‹I› may also function merely as an indicator that the preceding ‹c› or ‹g› is soft, e.g. cia (/tʃa/), ciu (/tʃu/). When the hard pronunciation occurs before a front vowel, ‹h› (which is always silent) is to mark it as such so that che represents /ke/ or /kɛ/ and chi represents /ki/. In the evolution of the Latin language, the postalveolar affricates [tʃ/ and /dʒ/ were contextual variants of the velar consonants /k/ and /g/. They eventually came to be full phonemes, and the said orthographic practice was used to distinguish them. The phonemicity of the affricates can be demonstrated with the minimal pairs:

The trigraphs ‹cch› and ‹ggh› are used to indicate a geminated /k/ and /g/, respectively, when they occur before ‹i› or ‹e›; e.g. occhi /ˈokːi/ ('eyes'), agghindare /aɡːinˈdare/ (to dress up).^[1]

‹G› is also used to mark that a following ‹l› or ‹n› is soft (this is not always true in loanwords from other languages). With ‹l›, a following ‹i› is also necessary, though this may be stressed or unstressed: famiglia /faˈmiʎʎa/ ('family').

The digraph ‹sc› is used before ‹e› and ‹i› to represent /ʃ/; before other vowels, ‹sci› is used. Otherwise, ‹sc› represents /sk/, the ‹c› of which follows the normal orthographic rules explained above.

Other than a few Northern Italian dialects, intervocalic /ʎ/, /ɲ/, and /ʃ/ are always geminated and no orthographic distinction is made to indicate this.

Other letters

In addition to being used to indicate a hard ‹c› or ‹g› before front vowels, ‹h› is also used to distinguish ho, hai, ha, hanno (present indicative of avere, 'to have') from o ('or'), ai ('to the'), a ('to'), anno ('year'); since ‹h› is always silent, there is no difference in the pronunciation of such words. In foreign loanwords, the h is still silent: hovercraft /ˈɔverkraft/.

‹Z› represents an alveolar affricate consonant; either voiced /dz/ (zanzara /dzanˈdzara/ 'mosquito') or voiceless /ts/ (nazione /naˈttsjone/ 'nation'), depending on context, though there are few minimal pairs.

‹S› also is ambiguous to voicing; it can represent /s/ or /z/. However, these two phonemes are in complementary distribution everywhere except between two vowels in the same word and, even in such environment, there are very few minimal pairs.

Although they are not considered part of the standard Italian alphabet, ‹j›' (i lunga),^[2] ‹k› (cappa), ‹w› (vi doppia or doppia vu), ‹x› (ics), and ‹y› (ipsilon or i greca) still appear in loanwords (such as jeans, whisky, and taxi). ‹X› has become a commonly used letter in genuine Italian words with the prefix extra-. An older orthographic convention was to use ‹j› as a variant of ‹i› (in such instances, it works just like an unstressed ‹i› and represents /j/); as such, it still appears in the first name "Jacopo" as well as in some Italian place names, e.g., the towns of Bajardo, Jelsi, Mezzojuso, and Torre Cajetani; it also appears in the alternate spelling Mar Jonio (also spelled Mar Ionio) for the Ionian Sea.

Diacritics

The acute accent may be used on ‹e› and ‹o› to represent close-mid vowels when they are stressed in a position other than the default second-to-last syllable; this use of accents is generally only mandatory in the final syllable. Since final ‹o› is hardly ever close-mid, ‹ó› is very rarely encountered in written Italian (metró). The grave accent may be used on ‹e› and ‹o› when they represent open-mid vowels. All vowels aside from these two employ only the grave accent in most texts. Both acute and grave accent may sometimes be used to distinguish homographs.

The circumflex accent can be used to mark the contraction of two vowels, especially two ‹i›'s. For example, it can be used to differentiate words like geni ('genes') and genî ('geniuses'). However, its use is quite rare, and seen as archaic.

References

See also

• Alphabets derived from the Latin
• Italian phonology