The Italian alphabet and pronunciation

The Italian alphabet has 21 letters. Their names are feminine (la a, la b). Many consonants are said with an i after them (bi, ci, di), others with an e before them (effe, elle, emme).

To spell a word, Italians often add a city name to each letter: A come Ancona, B come Bologna. To ask how something is spelt, say Come si scrive?

The letters j, k, w, x and y are not part of the traditional Italian alphabet. You'll only find them in foreign words and names, and they are pronounced more or less as in the original language.

Italian has five vowel letters. They always keep a clear, pure sound, even at the end of a word: pane is “PAH-neh”. Don't reduce them to “uh”, as English often does, and don't add a glide: no is a short, pure “o”.

e and o each have an open and a closed sound: open in bene and otto, closed in sera and sole. The choice varies from region to region, and you'll be understood either way. When two vowels meet, say both of them: euro is “EH-oo-ro”.

Most consonants sound roughly as in English. c and g change their sound with the next letter: they are hard before a, o and u, and soft before e and i. An h after them keeps them hard, and an i before a, o or u keeps them soft without being heard itself.

Say p, t and the hard c without the little puff of air that English adds. The r is tapped or rolled with the tip of the tongue.

Double consonants are really pronounced double: hold the sound a little longer, and keep the vowel before it short. This can change the meaning: nono (ninth) and nonno (grandfather), sete (thirst) and sette (seven).

Most words are stressed on the second-to-last syllable: amico (“a-MEE-ko”), parlare. Some are stressed earlier, like camera and telefono, and the loro form of verbs: parlano (“PAR-la-no”). The spelling doesn't show this, so learn the stress with the word.

When the stress falls on the last vowel, it has a written accent: città, caffè, università, perché. Most accents are grave (à, è, ì, ò, ù). The acute é marks a closed e, as in perché. A few short words have an accent to tell them apart from another word: è (is) and e (and), sì (yes) and si (oneself), là (there) and la (the).

Read each sentence aloud, then play the audio and compare. Each one practises sounds from this page: c and ch, g and gli, gn, sc, double consonants and final accents.