Talk:Italian phonology

correct and delete the comment

Obviously, what is represented as "a", should be IPA ä, in the vowel chart. Although IPA ä is confusing, in view of e.g. German ä. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.87.92.223 (talk) 18:06, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Untitled

Not sure about the new rewrite.

The current layout (which includes the two latest edits by Army1987) seems even clunkier than the previous organization. For one thing, the consonants are in sub categories while the vowels are in a list. Furthermore, sub-cating the consonants makes the TOC huge. Finally, it is completely different (and harder to follow) than the other forms of phonology pages. See Spanish phonology, Hmong phonology, German phonology and French phonology for the examples, of which, German and French are probably what all phonology pages should aspire to become.

I propose keeping Army1984's IPA additions but returning to simple lists or moving forward to the more encyclopedic style. Grika 03:23, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Now I splitted away the section about spelling, and added a request for expansion.--Army1987 21:36, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Minimal pairs theory?

The article features this line: "Since /ʃ/ surfaces as long post-vocalically, this can produce minimal pairs distinguished only by length of the word-initial consonant:[citation needed] [laʃeːna] la cena vs. [laʃʃeːna] la scena."

I'd like to point 3 things out:

1. the context is about central italy dialects, therefore the IPA translation of the second expression should be [laʃʃɛːna] (open "e", as in standard italian). As far as I know, [ʃeːna] is very northern;
2. I couldn't think of any other word pair showing the phenomenon;
3. there's no citation.
   

In conclusion, if my first point is true, there's no proof that /tʃ/ turning into /ʃ/ can even generate a single minimal pair.
Best, Marco — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.42.32.117 (talk) 01:20, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, another such minimal pair is “la ciocca” and “la sciocca”, which do sound very different and immediately recognizable from each other here in Rome. And perhaps there are others.

As to the vowel in “scena”, yes, of course that is an open “e”, /ɛ/, in all central Italy. But that’s a detail. In Bari (southeast) it’s a closed “e”, and in Turin (northwest) is an intermediate “e” (since the italian spoken in Turin has only one “e” and one “o”). Mauro Maulon69 (talk) 23:44, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Lazio is semi-infamous for variation of the the vowel of scena. In any case, here are a few more pairs: pace - pasce, pece - pesce, licio - liscio, cacio - cascio. This is sufficiently well known and banal that no citation should be necessary. --47.32.20.133 (talk) 17:41, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Palatal approximant

Why is there no /j/ in the table whereas there's one mentioned in the following paragraph? Pittmirg 09:30, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Double consonants in the sample text

Since the consonants doubled in the orthography represent geminated (i.e. long) consonants with a single release, shouldn't they be marked with the standard lenght mark ː in the IPA trasncription instead? As they are written as the same letter twice it looks as if they were two separate consonants next to each other, not just a long one. --Imploder (talk) 15:29, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

As an Italian speaker and language user, I am completely positive that the article uses the correct IPA transcription for geminated consonants, as done by Italian dictionaries using IPA transcriptions (like the "Zingarelli Italian dictionary" 11th edition, from Zanichelli editing house). The usage of the IPA length mark ':' is restricted to vowels. --Blaisorblade (talk) 21:04, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, i agree with above. The consonant length is greater only in the so called double “semi-vowels”, such as “ll” (e.g. “pala” vs. “palla”), and that’s sort of a secondary effect. The double consonants with a plosive component are actually two: the first one is articulated, but not released (e.g. “fato” vs. “fatto”). Mauro Maulon69 (talk) 23:53, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Comment about pronunciation of /r/ in the sample text

The claim is made that /r/ is, in Parma, pronounced as a 'velar trill'. This is not physiologically possible, as there's no articulator to flap against the velum. See Velar consonant. I haven't modified the article because I don't know how /r/ is represented in Parma dialect. Jogloran (talk) 08:50, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

More about /r/ pronunciation: As an example of normal variation inside the population, a small percentage of native speakers would realize atypically the trill. This sound is considered a defective pronunciation that could be fixed through speech therapy. It is called 'erre moscia' (soft r) and sounds like a 'v': rosa would be realized like vosa. A different issue are regional differences in the pronunciation of the trill due to cultural and historical influences, especially from French. An example of the latter is the area around Parma and Piacenza, where a high percentage of the population pronounce it like an uvular fricative, similar to the French 'r'. This phenomenon can be explain by the French cultural influence of Maria Louise, wife of Napoleon, who ruled the Ducat of Parma and Piacenza after the abdication of Napoleon, form 1814 to 1847 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.121.171.72 (talk) 16:20, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

sinalefe

The article refers to the concept of sinalefe, using the Italian term. Presumably this is the same as synalepha - would it be more useful to use the English term (perhaps as a translation of the Italian term rather than instead of it) and to link to that article? — Paul G (talk) 12:39, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Well spotted. I don’t see any particular need to specify the Italian translation, so I’ve made the simple change. —Ian Spackman (talk) 13:08, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

/e/ ~ ɛ and /o/ ~ /ɔ/

I've added the paragraph about this pronunciation difference, even if I'm not a phonology scholar but I'm just a native (Southern) Italian speaker. Some help on it may be needed. However, I verified my information on the corresponding Italian page it:Fonologia_dell'italiano, and I have some knowledge about phonology. The note about minimal pairs is completely unreferenced, but it is something anybody in Italy would agree with (after becoming aware of the issue). I've added {{fact}} anyway, to comply with Wikipedia rules. --Blaisorblade (talk) 21:08, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I've moved the paragraph up, cleaned up the wording, and added more fact tags to it. The problem with it:Fonologia dell'italiano is that it provides no citations. Hopefully we'll find some sourcing on the statements. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 05:38, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

While that contrast is somewhat weak and there are great regional variations, it is still present, especially in Central Italy, where the difference between botte "blows" and botte "cask" is clearly audible. Saying "only for professional speakers who have been specifically trained" and "most speakers" is an exaggeration. I'm removing the second sentence. -- Army1987 (t — c) 13:18, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

There is a tendency to use only the close-mid vowels more frequently in Northern Italian dialects

This is not true. There are many Northern accents: 1. in Torinese, all vowels are pronounced open: vèrde, giòrno, stèlla, ventitrè, perchè, tèmpo, bène 2. in Milanese, there are 7 vowels, but many times they usage is different from the standard (based on Tuscan Italian): béne, témpo, Daniéla (standard: bène, tèmpo, Danièla); perchè, ventitrè (standard: perché, ventitré) 3. Venetian accent, Genoan accent and Brescian accent of local persons speaking standard Italian also has 7 vowels, but their distribution is different from both Milanese and the standard Italian (based on Tuscan): the word Vèneto is pronounced in Venice as in standard Italian: Vèneto, but in Genoa and Brescia it's véneto. 4. The local pronunciation of the Northern town of Como is Cómo, but in national RAI newscasts the standard (Tuscan) form is used: Còmo (with the open vowel).

When in doubt, check to Dictionary of Italian pronunciation: The Pronunciation of Italian http://venus.unive.it/canipa/pdf/HPr_03_Italian.pdf

Dizionario di pronuncia italiana http://venus.unive.it/canipa/pdf/DiPI_3_A-Z.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.141.48.65 (talk) 05:00, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

"pseudo" -> "sseudo"?

I do not doubt that the source given describes "sseudo" as a usual careless pronunciation for "pseudo" and the like, but I, an Italian living in Italy, never heard such a way of pronouncing this sets of consonants. If anything, somebody introduces a ghost vowel, or perhaps a schwa, sound, saying almost "peseudo". I suppose that, as the source is a 1944 book, something has changed in non-written Italian uses. But of course I am not an acceptable source, so I hope I or somebody else will find a more recent one. (Thanks for correcting the tag!) Goochelaar (talk) 21:39, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree, this assimilation may be true for consonants not in syllable-initial position. 84.223.133.56 (talk) 02:33, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Never heard. At most there are people pronouncing pneumatico as /(il) neu'matiko/ (not /(lo) nneu'matiko/, such an effort would be unnecessary). --Erinaceus (talk) 17:05, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Neither I, native speaker, have ever heard "ps->ss" or "pn->nn". In some southern variety (i.e. in Sicily) it can be added a vowel and a syllable (psychologist, "psi-'cɔ-lɔ-go" becomes "pis-si-'cɔ-lɔ-go"), but it's far from being standard language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.134.19.249 (talk) 18:32, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Same, and I’m a native speaker, too. I never heard no simplification whatsoever of initial consonant clusters. “Psiche”, “pneuma”, “pterosauro”, “ctonio”, “Cnosso”, “xeno-”, etc., are always pronounced entirely, that is: as a cluster of two different consonants, by everybody; except that some people put a schwa or an “e” in between the two; but that sounds quite clumsy. Mauro Maulon69 (talk) 00:04, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

According to Luciano Canepari’s spelling dictionary (http://venus.unive.it/canipa/pdf/DiPI_3_A-Z.pdf), /ps/ has the standard realisation of [ps], and in some common case also [*s] or [piss]. (The asterisk means the consonant is doubled after a vowel.) The latter two are both marked with a downward arrow, which seems to mean (going by their use in other entries) that these forms may occur but are incorrect and considered uneducated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.64.90.68 (talk) 16:00, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Sample Text section with IPA transcription

I'm wondering why the IPA transcription shows some of the letter I sounds (usually [i]) as [ɪ], when the article makes no mention of [ɪ] even existing as a phoneme in Italian. Just wondering if there's any basis to it. Afc0703 (talk) 16:19, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

If [ɪ] is an allophone of /i/, the sample text seems to apply it inconsistently. I've replaced all instances with i. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:41, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Native speaker choice: the speaker sounds like he has a relative common mispronounciation of the //r, the so called 'erre moscia". Although quite subtle, it would be probably more appropriate to choose a speaker with a pronunciation that is more statistical representative of Milan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.121.171.72 (talk) 16:26, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

flap vs trill

I take it from the wording that the diff tween /r/ & /rr/ is a long vs short trill, not flap vs trill as in Spanish, so I made this explicit. A one-vibration trill is not the same as a flap (the aerodynamics differ), but please correct me if I got it wrong. kwami (talk) 14:19, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

You're wrong, though not on here, Italian has flap R exactly like Spanish, it's a natural allophone in all languages having trill R.. sadly Wikipedia won't accept it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.182.77.236 (talk) 00:47, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Where is your source for that? In Spanish, the flap is not at all an allophone of the trill. They are different phonemes, with a minimal pair such as "perro" / "pero". You can't use a trill in the latter. You can in Italian. --LjL (talk) 01:00, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Not to undermine your authority, LjL, but according to some pretty prominant authorities regarding Spanish phonology, the flap and trill are basically the same phoneme with the trill surfacing always when geminated. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:33, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Eh, maybe, after all when it comes to details such as this it's mostly just a matter of how one decides to analyze it, isn't it? I find it's a peculiar analysis, though, because it would make it basically the only geminated consonant in Spanish - Occam's razor and all... --LjL (talk) 13:25, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Here's my source : http://venus.unive.it/canipa/pdf/HPr_03_Italian.pdf .. Luciano Canepari canIPA, one of the best phoneticians all over the world.. flap R in Italian EXISTS, I'm Italian and I always use it, sometimes, even replacing the trill.. but it's mainly the big allophone of the /r/ sound in unstressed syllables.. Saying a /r/ in unstressed positions is almost impossible and considered ridicolous.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.182.77.236 (talk) 01:17, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

So you don't use a /r/ in "arrivato"? Because, you know, that's an unstressed syllable. As for your source - yes, I see what it's saying; I don't think it matches my pronunciation, however, and anything that prescribes allophones for a language with as many varieties as Italian should be taken with a grain of salt. Feel free to add information about usage of flaps, for what I'm concerned, but please don't do it the way you did in your last edit, but turning a cautious "sometimes" statement into a blanket "always, everyone, everywhere" one. That will just earn you more reverts, you know. --LjL (talk) 01:23, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I say arrivato with a double flap, and rarely with a trill... this is standard Italian... ever heard something using /r/ for caro, or diario?? Come on... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.182.77.236 (talk) 01:53, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

And how does one pronounce a double flap, exactly? And yes, in very careful pronunciation, I can very much see non-geminated "r" being pronounced as a trill (quite possibly with two touches). Anyway, the point is also that a one-touch trill is not the same thing as a flap - or at least, that's what Trill consonant and Flap consonant, and my sense of hearing agrees although that hardly matters. While a trill might possibly only have a single contact, though, I really can't think of something like a double flap. --LjL (talk) 02:00, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I've never heard of a double flap. Since we're getting into phonetic particularities here, remember that we should find published sources. Native speaker insight and OR will often steer us in the wrong direction when it comes to phonetics. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 02:43, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Of course, but I think I'll let my native speaker's common sense guide me in deciding which statements to require sources for, and the like. 80.182.77.236 does provide a source... I'm not sure it looks like a very peer-reviewed, paper-published reliable source, but at least it's not just hot air. It does feature "double" flaps in its transcription, however; as I said, I really doubt such a thing exists... maybe, by duplicating the phone, it means long (geminated), but does that exist, either? --LjL (talk) 13:15, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

This discussion belongs to years ago, so I hope that my comment will still be helpful. First of all, a necessary preamble: consonants in Italian can be double or single, as is well known; however, what is often overlooked in this description is that this contrast can only occur in certain positions, i.e. in between vowels or between a vowel and a "semivowel" (/w/ and /j/) or, for plosives, between a vowel and "r"/"l"; in all other position all consonants have an indeterminate length. So in the word "pasto" ("meal") neither the "s" nor the "t" can be described as being "single" or "double", they have an intermidiate, indeterminate length (pronouncing something like "passto" or "pastto" would be meaningless in Italian phonology, unlike other languages featuring geminate consonants like Finnish). So, applying this concept to the pronunciation of "r": single "r" is pronounced as a flap, double and indeterminate "r" are pronounced as a trill in standard pronounciation; for example "caro" (dear) contains a flap, while "terra" (earth) and "treno" (train) both contain a trill. You can check this listening to the entries of the "Dizionario di Ortografia e Pronuncia", published by the Italian state television RAI and which is (or used to be) available on this page. Using the trill in "caro", no matter how short, would inevitably turn it into "carro" (charriot).

I am a native speaker, I've taught Italian to foreigners and I have studied and compared Italian phonology in depth. Of course, this claims are not sufficient for wikipedia, but there's an inherent problem when referencing publications on the subject. For long time phonology has been considered in Italy just a lesser part of grammar; more importantly, most study focussed on internal controversies and variations, i.e. describing the language from within the language, a more objective and scientific study of the phonetics is quite limited. It suffices to say that even IPA has hardly ever been used in the description of Italian phonetics, many authors using custom phonetic conventions even in promimenent works (such as the one I linked before). This means that while the contrast between /e/ and /ɛ/ or /ɔ/ and /o/ is widely discussed in many pubblication because there's a lot of variation in distribution, little work can be found about other distinctive traits of Italian phonology that are uniform or nearly so among native speakers (e.g. the assimilation of place of articulation of "n" with the following consonant; the lengthening of the vowel in stressed, open syllables inside words; phonetic value of syllables like in /pas.to/ contrasting with the prescribed orthographic split "pa-sto", syllable-timed rythm, etc.). The difference of distribution of flap vs trill for "r", as well as an accurate description of consonants of incontrastive length in general, has been largely disreguarded. Geon79 (talk) 00:51, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I found a source^{[1] pp. 213-214} which reviews Canepari (1999:97-98), who says:

“[N]ella pronuncia neutra odierna effettiva abbiamo, normalmente [r] in sillaba accentata: [(C/V)ˈrV-,ˈCrV-, ˈVrːC(V),ˈV(ː)r#] (oppure, solo come variante occasionale, non sistematica, e non enfatica, [ɾ]). Mentre negli altri casi si ha [ɾ]: [ˈVːɾV, (V/C)(ˌ)ɾV-, Vɾ-, -ɾ(ˈ)C-] (oppure come variante possibile, specie per enfasi, [r]). Per /rr/ si ha: [ˈVrːɾV, VɾˈrV, (ˌ)VɾɾV, Vɾ(ˌ)ɾV] (oppure anche [rːr, rr], soprattutto per enfasi).”

However, the analysis concludes that [ɾ] "is restricted to the intervocalic unstressed position or to the ‘explosive’ phase of /rr/", and that the other supposed systematic realisations of it, i.e. in non-intervocalic unstressed syllables, are just shorter trills with fewer taps. As for the earlier discussion, my thinking is that since [r] is a particularly hard sound for non-native speakers to pronounce, it tends to be overdone (louder, longer, with more breath) compared with natural Italian, and so perhaps for someone learning the language [ɾ] is a better approximation in these cases.

In any case, if carro vs caro shows a phonemic contrast it should be added to the list of phonemes. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 15:03, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

Good point. Perhaps it's possible to do it without triggering too much quarreling, so that pala/palla, ano/anno, casa/cassa, fato/fatto, etc., can handled along with it.47.32.20.133 (talk) 16:14, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

@ReconditeRodent: wait, what is going on here? It’s true in certain positions short /r/ is realized as a flap, but wouldn’t it be much easier to simply add a note? I think it’s pointless to have a help that lists it separately when in Italian all consonants (except /z/ which is always short) contrast by length and not by quality. イヴァンスクルージ九十八_（会話） 21:54, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

@IvanScrooge98: The help pages are organised around the IPA, not just letters or phonemes, so, for example, the Help:IPA/Standard German page lists both [ç] and [x] even though they are in complementary distribution, which is useful because it means we can a) give examples of the context(s) in which the sound occurs and b) be more precise about the best approximation for an English speaker, which is the ultimate goal of these pages after all. This second point is particularly relevant because quite a few English accents feature this sound, and so for people who speak or can imitate those accents an entry means pronouncing a sound you already know instead of trying to pronounce a new one which it seems here would sound less natural anyway. A footnote might be preferable if it were only found in a regional dialect, but my understanding is that this is a common to universal feature of Italian. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 23:41, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

I've realised that carro and similar words are usually transcribed two /r/s, as in /'karro/^[2][3], so the distinction with words like caro (/'kaɾo/) probably doesn't count as a phonemic contrast like in Spanish. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 23:41, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

If the difference weren't phonemic, caro and carro couldn't contrast, and they do. If you mean are "geminates" separate phonemes from singletons in Italian, the question is almost as fraught as it is for Spanish, but helped along by phonological behavior strongly suggesting that not just geminate plosives, but even long liquids and nasals are structurally distinct. Singleton V.CV vs. VC.CV. For Italian this is a a pseudo-problem (and quite possibly for Spanish as well). 47.32.20.133 (talk) 13:39, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

@ReconditeRodent: yes, but those allophones are listed in the helps because they are actually either a standard or a pretty much universal feature of the language, while in Italian short [r] and [ɾ] are in free variation, since the phonemic contrast stands rather between /r/ and /rr/, as for all other consonants; for consistency reasons, I don’t think we need a whole row in the column at all for a possible (however common) realization of short /r/. イヴァンスクルージ九十八_（会話） 06:34, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

@IvanScrooge98: The only way I can see [ɾ] can be added to Help:IPA/Italian is if /r/ was consistently realized as [ɾ] in intervocalic positions. ReconditeRodent edited the article to suggest this (by changing "may be" to "is realised as"), while you say it's in free variation. As far as I can tell you're the one who is correct, per Rogers & d'Arcangeli. Nardog (talk) 07:01, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

@Nardog: I admit they are in free variation but in the context we are discussing, [ɾ] is clearly much more usual, to the point of being standard. Romano writes: "Regional varieties of Italian follow the same distribution, with intervocalic single rhotics realised as single-strike sounds." A footnote reads: "Inouye (1995) demonstrated that intervocalic tapping of trills is widespread crosslinguistically (in this case only as realisations of a single consonant)."

Alternatively, in the phonetic transcription in Rogers & d'Arcangeli I count 7 intervocalic [ɾ]s vs 2 [r]s. I agree "is realised" was too definitive a statement and I'm happy to leave the phrasing as is on Italian phonology but help pages and the IPA given in articles should reflect the most common and most useful pronunciation. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 11:46, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

See this source, based on the 2002 Lo Zingarelli dictionary, which consistently transcribes [ɾ] as standard. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ReconditeRodent (talk • contribs) 14:01, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

The point here is: in Spanish, Catalan and a few other Romance languages, the phonemic contrast between long and short consonants only occurs for few sounds: Spanish contrast only /n/ vs /nː/ and /m/ vs /mː/ besides /ɾ/ vs /r/, and it isn’t even a common opposition, since it is only found in words such as those prefixed with in-; in Italian, on the contrary, all consonants except /z/ are each opposed to its geminate counterpart, and replacing the /r/–/rr/ opposition with /ɾ/–/r/ just to align to other helps is imho simply inconsistent, especially given that [ɾ] and [r] are both free variants of phonemic short /r/. イヴァンスクルージ九十八_（会話） 15:26, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

I appreciate that for a native Italian speaker the [ɾ]-[r] distinction feels the same as the distinction between other geminate and non-geminate pairs but for non-native speakers (who these pages are designed for) they seem like entirely different sounds, which is why they have separate IPA symbols. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 20:34, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

It doesn’t feel the same, it is: that’s precisely why I would avoid listing [ɾ]. イヴァンスクルージ九十八_（会話） 21:29, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

@IvanScrooge98: I think I've found the issue: I'm interpreting anything that sounds like a tap as a tap and you're interpreting anything that you make the same motion as a trill to pronounce as a trill, and it turns out there's such a thing as "monovibrant trill" which is essentially both of those things, in that it's aurally indistinguishable from a tap but is made using the same tongue vibration as in a trill. I also found a source which transcribes "monovibrant trills" with [ɾ]. More detail at the RfC on Help:IPA/Italian. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 23:45, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

@ReconditeRodent: oh great! So basically single postvocalic /r/ may be uttered as pretty much all the realizations between actual [r] and [ɾ], is that so? Do you concur now a note is more practical, considering the variation? イヴァンスクルージ九十八_（会話） 08:13, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

No, because it is rare for it to be realised as a "multivibrant" which is the only kind of trill which sounds like a trill to most people. I know it's a shame to mess up the system of double letters being distinguished only by duration, but this is a pronunciation guide and monovibrant trills and taps are indistinguishable in spoken language, while both are distinguishable from multivibrants. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 12:12, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Notes

the letter a

This is pronounced like the a in cat most of the time; it is a schwa otherwise. the italianlanguageguide has it mostly right and my Larousse Interprète Français-Italien by Richard Silvestri, says it is pronounced as in French, meaning like the a in cat, a fused ae in the IPA, which is low, front, unrounded, lax, and open, while the a as in father, "a" in the IPA, is low, central, rounded, tense, and open. I am half-Italain and a linguistics student and language buff and as far as I know the "a" sound does not exist in Italian and certainly I have never heard the a pronounced that way in Italian. If you can prove it does by showing real Italians speaking real and standard Italian, the Tuscan dialect, I would be surprised. --Bpell (talk) 18:16, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Sources seem to agree with the phonetic values from Rogers & d'Arcangeli (the source of the vowel chart). Italian /a/ is actually pretty close to RP /ʌ/. French /a/ is not the a in cat (which is [æ]). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:27, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I should correct myself as there are some variations as some Italians say it as an a in cat and others as something like the a in about. The former is how we pronounce it. I listened to "Volare" and it is like the latter but I also listened to Fabio Triolo-TeleEuropa also on You tube, but which I couldn't find again, and it is like the former also.

But you are very wrong about French as it is indeed like cat in most instances in both Europe and Canada. Anyone who knows french knows that and I am a francophone living in a French community. But this is another matter as this article is about Italian.--Bpell (talk) 03:02, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

There are a number of ways that native speakers can help with editing language-related articles but the phonetic particularity of vowels is not one of them. Both the Italian and French phonology articles have sourced vowel charts and your status as half-Italian or as someone living with the French does not give you greater credibility. Nor does your status as a "linguistics student." We rely on sources here and even the sources that you cite above disagree with what you assert. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 03:15, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

He's very right about French. The normal French French "a" is not like cat. It's central, "cat" is front. I don't know about Canada. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.188.186.58 (talk) 17:24, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

As far as I can tell (I'm a native Italian, and never spent more than about 15 consecutive days out of Italy), /a/ in Italian sounds more or less as the way the vowel in "cat" is pronunced nowadays on BBC (and the new edition of the OED is going to use /a/ for that[4]), but records from thirty years ago (when the transcription /æ/ was universal) sound somewhat more like /ɛ/ to an Italian ear. (And the sound in "love" used to sound halfway between /a/ and /ɔ/, but it seems to be getting lower, too.) I can't see any problem with /aɛeiɔou/ for Italian vowels. (Maybe /a/ isn't exactly as front as possible so a "retracted" diacritic might be used, but c'mon, this is a phonemic transcription.) I suspect that Bpell is confused because he is familiar with the "traditional" transcription of the cat vowel but with its "modern" pronunciation, so that he believes that æ is supposed to represent the sound in French patte/recent British English cat; and he might have not noticed that IPA uses a and ɑ with different meanings, so that he believes that they are glyph variations both used for the sound in French pâte/English father, which indeed isn't used in Italian. --A. di M. 15:42, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The Standard Italian /a/ as in casa (stressed syllable) and catarsi does sound as frontal as the English RP /a/ as in cat and back (current RP phonetic transcription here and here). Gian92 (talk) 20:35, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I must say I'm puzzled by this, too. The Italian /a/ is famous for being bright like the standard IPA [a]: not central [ä], but distinctly front [a] (like the [a] in the "Volare" song), except in the North (possible due to German/French influence). Did the study not record any variation, regional or otherwise? Apparently they analysed the speech only of a single speaker, even if she is from Rome, not Northern Italy. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:06, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Domenico Modugno was a Southerner, but his "a" in "volare" sounds pretty central to me: [5]. Is that a front "a" in your ears? It sounds very differnt from any English English "a" I've ever heard, whether north or south. I didn't know the Italian "a" was "famous" for being front either. I've always thought of it as central just like my own German one. What I do realise is that the Italian "a" is extremely open, more open than most other languages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.188.186.58 (talk) 17:19, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

The question is simpler than it appears. In Italian, all totally open vowels, and all medially articulated ones, up to the Schwa, are heard as allophones of “A”, provided that they’re unrounded. That’s why, when we learn English, we perceive the word “cut” as “càt”. And, in fact, many regional variants of Italian use various allophones for the same phoneme “a”. In Bari, for example, “cane” and “canne” are pronounced with a frontal and a rear “a”, respectively. Those allophones are perceived as “natural” and used also in formal speeches. But, anyway, the frontal “a” (as in northern English “cat”) is always heard as the best one. In Rome, that’s the only existing allophone for “a”. Mauro Maulon69 (talk) 00:31, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Sandhi

this section of the article substantially refers to a feature that is present in a few dialects of italian (indicatively, Florentine, or some from southern italy), most certainly not in the correct italian language. Please provide better explanation, description and references, or remove this section. Thanks, Antonio

I must contradict you: see any good grammar or dictionary, such as what Treccani dictionary says under "raddoppiamento":

In fonetica, raddoppiamento o rafforzamento sintattico o fonosintattico, fenomeno per cui determinate consonanti semplici iniziali di parola, quando questa segue nel discorso (senza che vi sia una pausa o un dislivello stilistico di tono) ad altra parola che termini in vocale (o sia costituita da una sola vocale), passano al grado rafforzato, ossia sono pronunciate doppie (per es., in ital., a casa 〈a kkàsa〉, sopra tutto 〈sópra ttùtto〉, come questo 〈kóme kku̯ésto〉)

(see http://www.treccani.it/Portale/elements/categoriesItems.jsp?pathFile=/sites/default/BancaDati/Vocabolario_online/R/VIT_III_R_095583.xml where there is further information afterwards). Happy editing, Goochelaar (talk) 17:20, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

We even have an article, Syntactic gemination, about this phenomenon. I have put in a link to it. Goochelaar (talk) 10:58, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Regional variation [kn] --> [nn]

I'm from Rome and I don't agree with Romans pronouncing [ˈtɛknika]as on a range from [ˈtɛnnika] to [ˈtɛnniɡa]. In the Roman dialect we don't assimilate k in [kn] to [nn] (they do in other central areas). We pronounce this either [kn] or [gn]. The range could be something like from [ˈtɛknika] to [ˈtɛkniɡa] to [ˈtɛgniga]. Sorry but I have no qualified written reference. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.17.207.143 (talk) 00:28, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Vowel length in Italian

The author proposes: "However, vowels in stressed open syllables are long (except when word-final)."

As a non-linguist, I have the impression that Italian simply does not know the quantity of vowels as it is known from, say, the Germanic languages, or maybe French, or Czech, Latvian or Finnish. Stressed vowels, not just in open syllables, tend to be "drawled" but this seems to be a phenomenon concomitant upon word-stress, and restricted to situations when the word is logically or emotively stressed, or perhaps pronounced as a stand-alone example, or some such. In the beginning of 'Pinocchio' (http://ia700406.us.archive.org/2/items/avventure_pinocchio_librivox/avventurepinocchio_01_collodi_64kb.mp3) I must admit I can't hear any long vowels no matter how hard I try in non-prominent words such as 'registrazione', 'sono', 'capitolo primo', 'Collodi' and most of the others. This is very unlike what we call vowel length in languages which really have it, like the afore-mentioned ones.. . 89.74.217.56 (talk) 23:14, 7 January 2011 (UTC) Wojciech Żełaniec

You may be confusing phonemic and solely phonetic vowel length, and expecting that long vowels will be of equivalent length across languages. To take Finnish as an example, /Vː/ and /V/ can and do determine minimal pairs. In Italian length is allophonic, with length occurring with regularity only in stressed open syllable. The /a/ of pane and the /a/ of panino do differ in length, with the first noticeably longer than the second. The length itself may sound -- and probably is, depending on the speakers -- "half long" as compared to Finnish, yet clearly longer than the open syllable stressed vowel of Spanish. Compare a Central Italian's rendition of Roma with a Finn's Rooma and a Spaniard's Roma. 47.32.20.133 (talk) 19:49, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

No I am not confusing those two things, I am well-aware of the difference. Still less do I expect that long vowels should be of equal length across languages; I've had way too much exposure to different languages for that. If, as you said, vowel-length in Italian is merely allophonic, what role does it play in that language (why are Italians so consistent in observing it (answer: they aren't!)) and why should we be reminded of it by means of the ugly colon? I'd question your statement, besides, that it occurs regularly in open syllables. It does occur, but neither regularly (I am not referring to that 'endearing' kind of mocking Italian by saying 'ro:ma', 'pa:ne' 'vi:no' etc. all the time), nor just in open syllables: I hear my Lombardian friends drawl their stressed vowels (but not regularly!, only when logically or emotionally emphasised, or before a pausa, but even this is neither regular nor predictable) even in closed syllables, e.g. "me:zzo" or "no:cciolo" or what not... No, I think the existence of the vowel-length in Italian is a myth, read-into Italian by scholars who had a 'real' (whatever this be...) vowel-length in their own languages. Besides, it sounds so cute to mock an Italian by saying 'mie:lo e:stero zucchera:to" or "Gi:gi Amoro:so", it's a bit like mocking a German by interspersing German words with superfluous glottal stops or a Swede by 'singing' one's mock-Swedish phrases or such-like. This said, I don't want to deny that word-stress in Italian may, and probably does, consist in occasionally lengthening the vowel of the to-be-stressed syllable. But the same is true of my native Polish, amongst other tongues, which no-one in his right mind would accuse of having vowel-length (like Italian, though, it does have consonant-length or -gemination; English and German haven't it, only (British English) vowel length, so does Czech and Slovak, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian have both.) Well, lascia:te mi canta:re, la chita:rra in ma:no, lascia:te mi canta:re, so:no Italia:no (ve:ro). Ain't that cute? 134.95.92.16 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

No, more silly than cute. And there are no long vowels in chitarra because there are no stressed open syllables. You're quite right, though, that vowel lengthening is not heard regularly in the Italian spoken in Lombardy, and lengthening can occur where it doesn't in so-called standard Italian. That's true of most of the North. Otherwise, Uguzzoni captures it very economically, speaking of stressed vowels: una vocale lunga è seguita da consonante breve (V:+C), mentre una vocale breve è seguita da consonante lunga (V+C:). Find an Italian to say "Che fanno a Fano?", and you'll hear the difference, probably even from most northerners in that case. Not surprisingly, it's more complex in the prosody of extended unguarded discourse (which you would know if you had checked out Bertinetto & Loporcaro (2005) in the article's references), but it's not untrue. If you develop a genuine interest in Italian phonology, you can get a very good start with Schmid, Stephan. 1999. Fonetica e fonologia dell' italiano. Torino: Paravia Scriptorium. 47.32.20.133 (talk) 02:44, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Lasciate mi cantare con la chitarra in mano is a song, and singing is not like speaking. Singing teachers usually advise their student to prolong every vowel or other syllable nucleus as much as possible because they are the sounds that carry pitch and dynamics best. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 03:05, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Of course silly, I was using that to mock an Italian-mocker who prolongs every stressed vowel and thinks that's 'cute', or that's the way an 'italia:no" should sound. As I said above, I consider it as obvious that Italian stressed vowels (not at the end of a word, like in 'liberta`') and not only in open syllables are quite often somewhat longer than non-stressed ones. Phonetically, that is. But, I'd think, this is just part of what their being stressed, word-stressed, consists in. In Polish (my native tongue), where the penultima is stressed somewhat more consistently than in Italian (in some variants ONLY the penultima can be stressed), being stressed is a mixture of such factors as: pitch, loudness and length. Which of the three (there are possibly some others) is the dominating in a given word in a given utterance depends on various rather difficult-to-predict factors. One of these is the age and the origin of the speaker, and there are people in whose speech the length (i.e. being longer than non-stressed vowels) is the dominant factor. I sometimes speak this way too (e.g. after longer stays in Italy...) but generally older citizens from the formerly Polish eastern territories (now Lithuania, White Russia, Ukraine) have this tendency: to prolong stressed vowels, or rather: to make them stressed by prolonging them. Yet no-one has so far proposed that contemporary Polish (even regional) has vowel-quantity. Is the situation in Italian not like that, too? If I say "che fanno a Fano" while stressing "Fa-" by pronouncing it more energetically or louder, but not lengthening the [a] in it, can I then be misunderstood or non-understood? Or will it be immediately obvious that I am not an Italian native speaker, may the rest of it sound as Italian as ever? Part of the problem seems to be that if you ask an Italian to pronounce a word in isolation, slowly and clearly, in a 'didactic' way, he or she will reliably prolong the stressed vowel. But in 'real life' speech he will do it only if there is logical or emotional emphasis to be put on the relevant word. If 'Fano' is at stake, it'll be 'che fanno a Fa:::no?' (as distinct from anywhere else), but if 'Fano' is presupposed and the activity is at stake, it'll be 'A Fano, che fanno?' with no lengthening of 'Fa-', and probably with 'che' in a higher pitch. But these are matters of word-stress and phrase intonation, not vowel-length. In similar situations, even vowels in closed syllables will be prolonged. 134.95.92.16 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

As for being misunderstood, read the article: "In Italian there is no phonemic distinction between long and short vowels, but vowels in stressed open syllables, unless word-final, are long." That implicitly takes you back to your observation when you opened this thread: in Italian vowel length doesn't work the way it does in e.g. Finnish. Quite right. Word-internal vowel length is phonemic in Finnish; it's not phonemic in Italian. -- If 'Fano' is at stake, it'll be 'che fanno a Fa:::no?' (as distinct from anywhere else), but if 'Fano' is presupposed and the activity is at stake, it'll be 'A Fano, che fanno?' with no lengthening of 'Fa-'. Not normally, no. The /a/ of Fano in the first one could be superlong, but without knowing the individual speaker's quirks, there's no reason to expect that it will be. In the second case, preposing normally topicalizes, so that with Fano preposed there's actually a little more likelihood of a superlong /a/ in Fano, and none that the /a/ will be short. -- Basta. These talk pages are not the place for Italian Phonology 101 lessons. Check out Schmid and the more serious of the article's references, and the bibliographies therein. (You can even test yourself. Once you have a little bit of understanding, you'll be able to explain why Italian has buono but bontà. Once you get the basics down pat, you'll be able to explain not only why Italian has ferro, not fierro, but also, more interestingly, why festa, not fiesta.) [imbokkalluːpo] 47.32.20.133 (talk) 12:57, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

I am not -- at least not here -- interested in Italian Phonology lessons; them there ferro-fierro issues, Historical Phonology issues I suppose, aren't quite unknown to me, either -- but you see, as a guy who occasionally (much too often) buys books by those who have they PhD's in Italian and other languages, I'd like to get things convincingly explained to me. Coming from a language which has no vowel-length at all and some (much less than does Italian, though) consonant gemination, I had to learn 'the hard way' what it is to understand and to understandably speak a language which has vowel length and no consonant gemination. But these hard-won skills are not straighforwardly transferable onto languages like Italian, of which scholars whose native languages have vowel length say it has it, too. (And scholars of other mother-tongues usually don't.) In other words, a 'long vowel' seems to be quite a different thing in Italian than it is in German, Czech or Finnish. But you guys somehow get away with glossing over this issue. Much to the 'benefit' of us punters.... Well. it's clearly enough if we buy your books... 153.19.31.79 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

In other words, a 'long vowel' seems to be quite a different thing in Italian than it is in German, Czech or Finnish. One more time: Yes. There's no chance for word-internal vowel length to be distinctive in Italian. But you guys somehow get away with glossing over this issue. No one who knows what s/he's doing glosses over it. Any comparative study will make the differences quite explicit. 47.32.20.133 (talk)

In very technical papers -- might well be, you're probably right. But in dictionaries, textbooks, the WP etc. the phonemic transcription of Italian words often includes the ominous ':' sign. E.g. this: "Rome (Italian: Roma [ˈroːma] (About this sound listen); Latin: Roma [ˈroːma]) is the capital city of Italy", in the WP. Forgive me if I appear stubborn, but I think it's wrong to suggest that the stressed vowel in a non-final open syllable is always /albeit non-phonemically/ a *long* vowel. A person who took this to heart and put it to practice would sound ridiculous -- or as mocking Italian. The truth is that it sometimes is, and sometimes isn't. In Latin it might have been [ˈroːma] or even /ˈroːma/. In Italian it's neither, I feel. My hypothesis: the lengthenings, wherever they occur, are part of what word-stress in Italian consists in or, in other words, is realised as. So marking the word stress in the phonetic transcription should be enough /presupposed that the reader knows how to stress words in Italian.../ 134.95.92.16 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

the phonemic transcription of Italian words often includes the ominous ':' sign. E.g. this: "Rome (Italian: Roma [ˈroːma] That's phonetic transcription. /phoneme/ [phone] is the convention. /ˈroma/ → [ˈroːma] is shorthand for "the phonemic structure /ˈroma/ is realized phonetically as [ˈroːma]." I think that's sort of what you're trying to say in your last two sentences immediately above, i.e. given a structure and its stress, a speaker in command of the phonology can pronounce it in a normal way. 47.32.20.133 (talk) 21:26, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I am sorry, it should have been 'the phoneTic transcription', that was what I meant and mistyped. Of course, I am aware of the difference between '/.../' and '[....]'. But I still see '[ˈroːma]' as dangerous, to wit, because it can misguide the reader to pronounce the city's name with a long [o] always, consistently, as she would with the German word 'Buch' (book) phonetically transcribed as '[bu:x]'. In German, it's a relatively long(er) vowel always, no matter what the context, the pragmatics, or any other relevant circumstances are like. That's what I call a 'robust vowel quantity'. In Italian by contrast -- well, if my untutored ears have heard right for the past 50-something years -- it's not always ['ro:ma], sometimes just ['roma], and this depends on the quirks of the individual to a considerable extent. And some other times ['ro:::ma] or worse still. If the relative length of the stressed vowel is part of what its being stressed consists in, in a given utterance, then in another utterance being stressed may consist rather in being pronounced louder, more energetically, or with a higher pitch instead, rather than lengthening -- following some rules that escape us (or just me) yet. Or -- who knows -- maybe the lengthening of the stressed vowel is NOT part of what its being stressed is realised as, but is situated on a different, say emotional, rhetorical or whatnot, level of language as actually spoken (parole?). To repeat: if I am under the impression that 'Roma' should always and consistently be realised as ['ro:ma], 'mano' as ['ma:no], etc., and this is what this transcription suggests, then I might end up speaking a rather strange-sounding version of Italian. Or am I wrong on this 'un? 134.95.92.16 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

Pretty much, yeah. Very determinedly so, it seems. 47.32.20.133 (talk) 01:21, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Here: http://etcweb.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/dante/almagest/cgi/audio2?poem=inf&canto=1

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura

ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura

esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte

che nel pensier rinova la paura

Tant' è amara che poco è più morte;

ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,

dirò de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte.

I honestly hear only 'oscura' and (the second) 'era', and perhaps 'amara' as (slightly) drawled, as far as the stressed syllable vowel is concerned. In all three cases, the lengthening is quite like what you can expect from a Polish person (if it had been Polish, of course) from a certain region, even though no-one claims that contemporary Polish has vowel quantity. I don't hear it in 'vita' or 'diritta' or 'smarrita' or 'cosa' and so on. I should add that I can speak and understand several languages which have real vowel quantity, such as German or Swedish (which has consonant quantity or gemination, in addition) and I usually both hear and realise the long vowels correctly in these languages. Italian -- no, they do lengthen their stressed vowels sometimes, and sometimes they don't but this is not at all (I'd insist) anything like the vowel quantity of Czech, Finnish, Latvian or even French. This trait (i.e. occasional lengthening) is exploited by mockers and parodists, and certainly you're well advised to drawl your accented vowels sometimes if you want to sound authentic (plus a certain whiney tone of voice), but a systemic part of language ... I dunno. But clearly, too many academic careers would be blemished if this imho erroneous assumption were withdrawn. 153.19.31.79 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

I hear it very clearly in primo, vita, trovai, definitely not d(i)ritta, but via and smarrita, yes, ditto cosa, dura, and so on. The /i/ of smarrita is a tiny bit less long that might be expected, and it sounds a little odd because of that. When he moves fast and doesn't stress, as in era at one point, no length. I don't know why the difference in perception, but you seem to be fixated on comparing to other languages rather than tuning your ear to Italian on its own, and that may be part of the problem. You also keep mentioning drawling; you may be expecting a good bit more length than is normal -- when the length is natural, it doesn't really sound anything like the foreigner's sing-song exaggeration that you've caricatured before. (If you would bother to read you'd see that some of those in the most successful academic careers are actually trying to sort this out, and agree with you more than you think.) 47.32.20.133 (talk) 13:30, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

ok, so your ear is obviously finer than mine, all the better! I can't hear the length in 'primo', 'vita' or 'trovai' /well, a diphthong as such is long, innit?/ at all, nor in 'cosa', 'smarrita' and so on. To be more precise: while in Italian word stress involves, like in so many other languages, a slight lengthening of the stressed syllable's vowel, and this component is in Italian more prominent than it is in Polish (where loudness and pitch seem more important) or Spanish, I can't hear any such lengthening in these words as could possibly generate the illusion of a truly (whatever that means) long vowel. In 'oscura' by contrast -- yes. In 'vita' -- no. I will have a look at Bertinetto & Loporcaro, thank you. Maybe it'll restore my faith in this kind of study... As for tuning my ear to Italian: well, I know what vowel length is, e.g. from German /e.g. 'all' vs. 'Aal', eel/, a perfect minimal pair, this is phonemic, robust, hard-working, while in Italian it's allophonic at best, flimsy and invites silly caricatures /pizza, mafia, espresso, and 'Gi:gi Amoro:so/ 153.19.31.79 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

German /e.g. 'all' vs. 'Aal', eel/, a perfect minimal pair, this is phonemic, robust, hard-working, while in Italian it's allophonic at best For the nth time, yes. Phonetic only, a classic case of totally automatic allophony. There are no minimal pairs possible in Italian of the sort (C)V:C(V) vs (C)VC(V), and there is no reason whatsoever to assume that, regardless of its phonological status, duration of vowel length in one language will match duration in another. flimsy and invites silly caricatures I have no idea what flimsy means in this context. Length is variable? If that's what you mean, of course it is. Ma che fai? can be said in many ways. If you're especially frustrated with whatever Tizio is doing, the /a/ may be super long. Or it could be a very short clipped remonstrative version in which length is all but absent. Totally expected variation, normal. (Ask speakers of North American English if they ever "drop their aitches". They'll almost always say no. Then get them to repeat He has a hat on his head several times. You'll soon arrive at a clear hierarchy of likelihood that the /h/ will drop.) As for caricature, the choice to do that is up to the speaker, as it is with the peculiarities of any language.

I entirely agree that Italians prolong and over-prolong their vowels for various expressive reasons. Or more broadly: all kinds of pragmatic reasons. This is obvious. And they do it very well, most of the time... Yet, in a language like German the vowel of "Aal" (eel) is always relatively longer than the adjacent 'short' vowels, no matter what the relevant pragmatics is. That's what I call 'robust' vowel-length, is it just called 'phonemic' technically? As for caricatures, I think this excessive drawling fits in well with various such properties as being overly emotional, theatrical, etc. deplorably still quite commonly ascribed to Italians; which is why I dislike this kind of caricature. As an aside: English and German (vowel length present) scholarly publications usually mention vowel length in Italian, while Polish (no vowel length) don't. People quite often like to 'discover' in a foreign language something from theirs, or overlook something theirs hasn't. I once knew an educated Chinese who believed German had tones, or a Swede who believed Swiss German had tonal accents (like Swedish). Again, a German language course in Swedish tells us 'gosse' (Swedish for 'boy', consonant gemination) is pronounced exactly like German 'Gosse' (gutter, no consonant gemination, which doesn't exist in German), which it isn't. Or that German guy in Italy who kept saying 'latte', he needed some milk, with a single 't', like 'Latte' in German, meaning 'lath' and no-one understood him. 153.19.31.79 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

is it just called 'phonemic' technically? No. If it's called phonemic, it's because it's phonemic. 47.32.20.133 (talk) 17:38, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, that question of mine was ungrammatical; I meant: 'is it precisely that which is technically called 'phonemic'?' To which your answer was 'yes', wasn't it? 153.19.31.79 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

A phonologist has just arrived from another galaxy, lands in Italy. S/he discovers that [ˈaːno] and [ˈanːo] are judged by native speakers to be different words, so there must be a phonemic difference between the two. Test to find out what. (...) S/he goes through the variations and discovers that [ˈaːno] and [ˈano] are not different words ("but only foreigners say [ˈano]"). Ditto [ˈanːo] and [ˈaːnːo] (not different words, but "[ˈaːnːo] sounds a little strange"). After some more testing (fato - fatto, pala - palla, etc.) and noticing alternations (pane, panificio; capace, capacità), she concludes that there is a phonemic contrast between "double consonants" and single ones, and that stressed vowels in a syllable not closed by consonant are phonetically long, but there is no phonemic contrast between long and short vowels. S/he hypothesizes that the phonemic structures of [ˈaːno] and [ˈanːo] are /ˈano/ and /ˈanno/ respectively. 47.32.20.133 (talk) 19:56, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

OK, but my point has been from the outset and still is that even the most native of Italian speakers _not always_ say ['a:no] or ['fa:to], but sometimes, too, ['ano] or ['fato], so it's not just foreigners. This is the Italian I am familiar with. If someone thinks it's always and invariably ['a:no] she will start speaking a funny Italian. To give an example of a somewhat analogous issue: I have an Italian friend who is in the habit of speaking slowly to very slowly whatever language he happens to be speaking (he is a rather pensive human being). Now he picked up the American voicing of [t] between vowels, (a disanalogy with our case: from what he heard, not from transcription), but he did not pick up the rule that your [t] 's godda be the more voiced the faster you are speaking. As a result, he would say, tempo lentissimo: 'A is bedda than B', 'that's a different madder', and the like, which sounds rather funny -- as does too 'Trahno, the capidal of Ondario' or 'senns' (for 'sentence') -- if you speak very slowly, as is his _naturel_. (In fact 'senns' for 'sentence', in a lentissimo utterance, can lead to misunderstandings.) Now imagine that an American English dictionary for foreigners indicated this type of allegro pronunciations as the standard or the only pronunciations quite generally. Would slow speakers who took this to heart not start sounding funny? I don't at all deny that it is often ['a:no] or ['fa:to], or that it's often (most of the time, in fact) 'bedda' or 'Trahno' in N. America, but I am uneasy about raising such pronunciations to the level of a norm. BTW isn't "to hypothesize" something of an Italianism in English ('ipotizzare'), or else a non-equivalent of 'to put forward a hypothesis', meaning, not the former, but rather to 'speculate', 'fantasize' or such like? 2A02:A312:C43D:DC00:D92C:8EB4:9368:3B5D (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

No. 47.32.20.133 (talk) 16:12, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Here's Gassman doing Canto 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBGq11ODudA Listen to his intro as well; you'll hear lots of more natural length there (Italian length, not German, Polish, Finnish...) 47.32.20.133 (talk) 14:54, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Amazing, beautiful, Italian is a very nice-sounding language. I start suspecting this whole 'vowel length' phenomenon in Italian is entirely _sui generis_, not comparable with the more pedestrian vowel lengths in German, Czech, Swedish etc. It deserves separate treatment on all levels of description134.95.92.16 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

I start suspecting this whole 'vowel length' phenomenon in Italian is entirely _sui generis_, not comparable with the more pedestrian vowel lengths in German, Czech, Swedish etc. LOL! ¡Por fin! 47.32.20.133 (talk) 01:21, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

What I start suspecting is that [ˈvɔi̯t͡ɕɛx ʐɛˈwaɲɛt͡s]'s sui generis means that it is futile to deal with Italian vowel length in the way this article currently does, for only insiders are able to understand this presentation. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 02:18, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

This is what this article claims:

"In Italian there is no phonemic distinction between long and short vowels, but vowels in stressed open syllables, unless word-final, are long."

And this is what the referenced source claims:

"Stress is phonemic. Stressed syllables show a tendency to lengthen the consonant in coda, if there is one; if there is no consonant, they lengthen the vowel. (This phenomenon, known as ‘phonetic lengthening’, is controversial.) But word-final stressed vowels remain short."

What is the exact reason a phenomenon which the source calls "a tendency" and "controversial" is presented as an established fact here? Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 10:01, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

The source gives no indication of what is meant by tendency, nor of what is controversial about vowel length in open stressed syllables. Perhaps your question can be answered by whoever it was who selected that article as a source. If detail is needed in this article, something like Bertinetto and Loporcaro's observation could be added, so as to introduce the concept of variability of length in unguarded connected speech, then an example: given that "all (non-emphasised) primary stresses but the utterance-final one are considerably weakened in the speech chain" (143), ... 47.32.20.133 (talk) 14:15, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

A very low profile answer: tendency -- sometimes perceptibly lengthened, sometimes not; controversial -- likely to give rise to discussions like this one. I shall check out the B & L book, I promise, 153.19.31.79 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

It's an article. Just click on the pdf link. 47.32.20.133 (talk) 19:56, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

That there is a 'tendency' to lengthening the stressed vowels (and yes, even in closed syllables, if my ears are any guide) I have no quarrel with. What I do have a problem with is erecting this 'tendency' into a hard phonetic fact, by means of such transcriptions as ['ro:ma], alongside and on a par with such ones as e.g. this one: 'Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (/ˈveɪbər/, German: [ˈveːbɐ]'. [ˈveːbɐ] will be [ˈveːbɐ], in German, regardless. The Italian ['ro:ma] can be ['roma] or ['ro:::ma] depending on the pragmatic context, the quirks of the speaker and such like. This is, among other things, what makes this tendency controversial, as this thread has made sufficiently evident, methinks. But it also makes it so interesting... 153.19.31.79 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

What I do have a problem with is erecting this 'tendency' into a hard phonetic fact, by means of such transcriptions as ['ro:ma], alongside and on a par with such ones as e.g. this one: 'Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (/ˈveɪbər/, German: [ˈveːbɐ]'. [ˈveːbɐ] will be [ˈveːbɐ], in German, regardless. 1) No claim or equivalence whatsoever is made about German in the description of Italian. A description of language x is a description of language x, not of a,b,c...y, z. . 2) Variation is normal. No brief description is going to include every possible detail. Even an extended description of American English phonology is unlikely to mention that "I am going to tell you..." is realized by some speakers, in some registers, as [ˈãmõˈtʰɛˑjˑə]. 47.32.20.133 (talk) 19:56, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Please have some mercy with us or'n'ry punters (=buyers/users of books written by professional linguists, readers of WP entries on phonology et., in this case). We have learnt on our own the complex API symbolism, the difference between -emic and -etic, langue and parole and so on.... and now you're telling us that '[...]' transcriptions mean quite different things depending on which languages they are being applied to? If it reads '[ˈveːbɐ]' it means a German will always say '[ˈveːbɐ]', give or take the absolute value of vowel duration in a given utterance -- but that's because it's German, while, when it's Italian, ['ro:ma] means that some Italians will say sometimes ['ro:ma] and at other times, or other Italians -- something else. Because 'no equivalence claim made'? This is very exacting, I think.... 2A02:A312:C43D:DC00:8043:6748:3CB0:70E8 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

If it reads '[ˈveːbɐ]' it means a German will always say '[ˈveːbɐ]' Record a trio of Germans half full of beer bickering over some point of Weber's work. If they are observed to maintain every Weber as [ˈveːbɐ] in a long heated discussion (be sure not to conflate tense/lax with actual length), you've got material for an excellent article. The journal Language Variation and Change would be happy to publish it. (Friendly tip to save time, frustration and eventual embarrassment: before you start, read everything you can find on phonological variation in general and variation in vowels in German specifically.) 47.32.20.133 (talk) 16:12, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Why an 'established fact'. I used to believe these two 'theories': 1) people whose native idioms to have a real(ish) vowel length (English is probably on the -ish side of the line) naturally and excusably tend to 'hear' vowel length wherever there is an ever so small tendency to lengthen some vowels. 2) All three highest-prestige European languages, English, French and German, do have a real(ish) vowel length (though in none of them is it as neat, hard-working and free from non-quantity-relevant admixtures as it is in Czech or Finnish or Latvian). So it's in a way flattering for Italian to count it as a vowel-quantity language as well. And easier to accomplish (lengthenings are far more frequent and perceptible) than e.g. for Polish, where there is too a certain tendency to lengthen stressed vowels. These are two very 'folksy' theories, no doubt... 153.19.31.79 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

Yes, Professor Żełaniec, as a Sinologist I suspect that if Modern Standard Mandarin Chinese (MSMC) or Standard Cantonese had a high prestige in the Italian-speaking world people might start to always transcribe pitch-related phenomena in Italian. Of course (at least) all continuant sounds have length and all voiced sounds have pitch. However if no rationale is given why some phenomena that are mere tendencies are always transcribed like hard facts while others are completely neglected, the method seems to lack some of the characteristics that science after Descartes is supposed to have. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 20:35, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes. That's why I said those two were two folksy 'theories'. Without even a tiny grain of truth in them, full stop. ... Or perhaps a question mark... ? Amicus Cartesius, sed ... BTW: Here is a German dictionary's entry 'Roma':

https://de.pons.com/%C3%BCbersetzung?q=roma&l=deit&in=it&lf=it -- you never see such a thing in a dictionary whose publisher's main address is in a country with a language with no vowel quantity... Of course this is al unscientific and "honny soyt qui mal y pense", I know ... 2A02:A312:C43D:DC00:8043:6748:3CB0:70E8 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

Interestingly, unlike the German PONS dictionary, the Italian pronunciation dictionary dipi online does not mark vowel length for Roma or any other entry.

PONS gives phonetic transcription. As indicated in the Breve guida on line, Canepari gives phonemic transcription in DiPi. 47.32.20.133 (talk) 16:12, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

What also fascinates me is the further inconsistency that although the referenced source first mentions that "[s]tressed syllables show a tendency to lengthen the consonant in coda" this part of the sentence is completely ignored in this article's transcriptions: There is a [ˈrɔs.po] but no [ˈrɔsː.po], as well as many more analogous cases where the coda of a stressed syllable happens to be a consonant. Looks like somebody failed to notice that Rogers & d'Arcangeli fromulated a "coda length tendency rule" and not merely a "coda vowel length tendency rule." Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 09:54, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

There are various issues here. First off, what they said was this: Stressed syllables show a tendency to lengthen the consonant in coda, if there is one; if there is no consonant, they lengthen the vowel. The problem with the statement is the vague waffling 'tendency'. In actual fact, lengthening of coda consonants is a rather weak tendency, applied -- if at all -- most saliently to /n/ and /r/ (as demonstrated in their transcriptions of one speaker, a rather peculiar one, as evidenced by a couple of her renditions of, e.g., the geminate and stressed vowel of mantello, markedly Roman). [ˈrɔsː.po] is not impossible, but highly unlikely. As for the second major issue, you make a good point (sort of, implicitly): Rogers and d'Arcangeli's little article is not intended as a description of Italian phonology, and should not be used as such. It's clearly labeled ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE IPA, according to JIPA's own description of the long series: "Illustrations of the IPA are concise accounts of the phonetic structure of different languages using the Association’s International Phonetic Alphabet." Concise, not exhaustive, complete, detailed... illustrations of IPA. 47.32.20.133 (talk) 16:12, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Well, http://www.dipionline.it, one of my favourite ones, is of Italian making, isn't it? Neither Anglo-Saxon nor Teutonic. Re the consonant coda issue I'll have a further question, layder. This proves only that this whole issue of 'Italian stressed syllables' is still far from ready to be presented as self-contained, complacent wisdom in Italian Phonology 101 courses. Which makes it all the more interesting, doesn't it?2A02:A312:C43D:DC00:D92C:8EB4:9368:3B5D (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

This, too, is instructive: http://operaclick.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20507&p=650315 read Messaggio da mascherpa » 29 giu 2015 10:57 re the name of L. Janáček, as far as the complex connections between vowel length and word stress in Italian are concerned. 153.19.31.79 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec

a --> ä

According to the location of /a/ on the vowel chart in the article and according to Open central unrounded vowel, the correct IPA symbol is [ä] , not [a]. --Espoo (talk) 15:59, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

IPA [a] represents both the front and the central vowel, [ä] is a non-obligatory specification of the latter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.188.186.58 (talk) 17:09, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

ɔ changed to ɒ

Empirically, the [ɔ] sound does not occur in Standard Italian. Comparing the Standard Italian do to the English Received Pronunciation hot they share roughly the same vocalic sound, especially the aperture. If not, the Italian open o is more open than the English RP /ɒ/, but never more close (as the Italian vowel chart unempirically suggests). Therefore, ɔ should be replaced with ɒ. Gian92 (talk) 20:15, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually, it's the other way around. RP has slowly closed its back vowels so what is traditionally written like /ɔ/ is now pronounced like [o] and /ɒ/ is pronounced as [ɔ]. This change has already been noted by experts: you can read an interesting explanation of the changes in RP, including this one, here. --Geon79 (talk) 02:44, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Consonants: include [ŋ]?

Shouldn't [ŋ] (engwa) be included in the consonants table, at nasal/velar? It does exist even if it is only an allophone of [n] before [k] and [g], but this could be explained in a note. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Collideascope (talk • contribs) 17:15, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

If you do that, you'll need to include also the labiodental nasal [ɱ] of "infinito" (infinte). That's because it is a phonological feature of Italian to articulate the nasal consonant is the same place as the following consonant and this is always written as n, unless it's exactly [m]. This is already written in the notes of the consonant table; the table itself only lists phonemes, not allophones. --Geon79 (talk) 02:18, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Exactly, and that’s so true that kids or uneducated people often forget that in front of P and B the “n” is written “m” (and is actually an “m”!), and write for example “caNbio” instead of “caMbio”. Mauro Maulon69 (talk) 00:57, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Affricate "allophones"

Moving the following claim made in a revision of the article to talk page:

• Studies report that the alveolar affricates /t͡s/ and /d͡z/ are quasi-allophones, with one minimal pair that is pronounced the same way by most speakers.

Admittedly, I don't even know which minimal pair this would be: I can think of none. However, I don't believe lack of a minimal pair automatically makes two sounds allophones of each others, if they're not in complementary distribution. So even if these mentioned studies were accurate (that needs a citation, anyway), the conclusion doesn't seem to follow from the premise, and to me, it seems intuitively wrong: there are very many words that, in a native speaker's mind, need to be pronounced with either /t͡s/ or /d͡z/, such that they're not interchangeable and don't depend on the surrounding context. In my dialect for instance (but I believe it's valid for Standard Italian), "pizza" is /pittsa/ and "mezzo" is /mεddzo/, and pronouncing them as /piddza/ or /mεttso/ would sound plain wrong. So I don't see how they could be (quasi)-allophones. LjL (talk) 15:00, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Canepari (http://venus.unive.it/canipa/pdf/HPr_03_Italian.pdf) too asserts that /t͡s d͡z/ distinct phonemes, and he mentions a minimal pair: ‹razza› /ˈratt͡sa/ meaning “race, species” and ‹razza› /ˈradd͡za/ meaning “ray [of light]”. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.64.164.96 (talk) 09:03, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

It's the fish actually. The ray of light is called raggio in Italian. By the way, casa is pronounced [ka:za] in standard Italian.--93.42.39.138 (talk) 18:55, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Onset: i and u are vowels, not consonants

I'm referring to the following 2 examples:

• /f v/ or any stop + /r/ + /j w/. E.g. priego (antiquated form of prego 'I pray'), proprio ('(one's) own' / proper / properly), pruovo (antiquated form of provo 'I try')
• /f v/ or any stop + /w/ + /j/. E.g. quieto ('quiet')

In Italian "i" and "u" are vowels, it seems to me that the examples are wrong. Can somebody comment on this?

Letters of the alphabet are neither vowels nor consonants, they are just letters of the alphabet. "Vowels" are about sound, not spelling. So whether "i" and "u" represent vowel sounds depends on the context. The word "ieri" is pronounced /'jeri/ (note the difference between the first and the last "i"), and the word "uovo" is pronounced /'wɔvo/ (note /w/ and not /u/). The sounds /j/ and /w/ are semivowels, and semivowels are often classed, at least for phonotactics purposes, as consonants, not as vowels. LjL (talk) 19:47, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Uvular fricative?

I see nothing in the article about a uvular fricative ʁ (or something similar) realization of the /r/ phoneme. I remember an Italian from Piedmont telling me that he had a "French 'r'" in Italian, but that he was only one of a few in his region with such pronunciation. However, recently I heard film director Bernardo Bertolucci speaking, and I realized he has the same pronunciation. You can hear an example here (multiple occurrences from the beginning of the video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3GZyTiUANM So I was wondering, does anyone know if this is considered a kind of speech impediment (as my Piedmontese friend seemed to imply)? Or is there any source acknowledging the existence of this realization of /r/? Tanynep (talk) 19:16, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

It is usually considered a speech impediment. The Italian Wikipedia has an article about it. Funnily enough, it has an identically-named article that refers to a phonetic change instead of a speech impediment. The phonetic change did happen in some Italian varieties, but it's fairly rare (off hand I couldn't tell you which places sport it). LjL (talk) 20:19, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

zz

This article says nothing about zz. Is mezzo really pronounced differently from avvezzo? --Espoo (talk) 13:25, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

gemination of

This article says:

• /z/ is the only consonant that cannot be geminated.

The Italian article says:

• Tutte le consonanti (tranne /z/, /j/ e /w/) possono essere fonologicamente geminate all'interno di parola tra vocali o tra vocale e /l/, /r/, /j/ o /w/. Per esempio: /ˈfatto/ ~ /ˈfatːo/.

--Espoo (talk) 13:41, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

The Italian article is right that /j/ and /w/ cannot be geminated. But the two are allophonic to unstressed, pre- or post-vocalic /i/ and /u/, respectively. Therefore they aren't counted as "true" consonants. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.188.186.58 (talk) 17:04, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

FWIW the geminate or long yod of [ˈajjo] aglio and [ˈpajja] paglia are fairly common dialectally and both seep into so-called Regional Italian. Less trivially, it's a sticky point, but it's quite a challenge to mount a credible non-circular argument that the [j] of più or the [w] of buono are allophones of /i/ and /u/. --47.32.20.133 (talk) 00:04, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

A coda is only permissible in case of monophthong nuclei

In light of e.g. fuorché, this could use some elaboration. --47.32.20.133 (talk) 20:35, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

syllabification of s+C clusters

citation needed - "Why should [sˈtɔrja] be “unrealizable phonetically following pause”? — Canepari mentions acoustic data (A Handbook of Pronunciation, p. 136) and refers the reader to chapters 12.2-6 of his Handbook of Phonetics, see especially chapter 12.5. — Please note that in Canepari's notational system [sˈtɔrja] does not imply that the [s] is syllabic [s̩], but merely that it has less acoustic energy resulting from initiator power and is therefore “less perceptible” than the [ˈs] in English [ˈstɔːɹi]"

No claim made that the /s/ is syllabic; it's extrasyllabic (thus the reduced acoustic energy option). Obviously I was using standard notation, as well as following Canepari's own description in his online Dizionario di pronuncia: "L'accento forte, o primario, è indicato dal simbolo / ˈ / e precede la sillaba da accentare", i.e. /s't/ designates syllable onset (not word onset) as /t/. I've clarified it a bit now, and attenuated the characterization of his structural claim, since he never does state it clearly. I've also added the precise citation, which is about as clear as Canepari ever gets in English on a topic that has him worked up: "acoustic data confirm the fact that [|s'tV] /|s'tV/ (after a pause, or 'silence' ) is [he means the sequence [sCV]] part of the same syllable (a little particular, possibly, on the scale of syllabicity, but nothing really surprising) whereas, obviously, [Vs'tV] /Vs'tV/ constitute two phono-syllables bordering two C" More detail is in the references in Sorianello's encyclopedia article -- or better yet, Hermes at al, 2013, Gestural coordination of Italian word-initial clusters, in Phonology 30.1-25; more up-to-date, very easy to find with Google. No great need to cite Canepari here, in fact; there are plenty of people who've worked on this. --47.32.20.133 (talk) 18:32, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

RfC: Should intervocalic r's be transcribed [r] or [ɾ]?

FYI

 – The RfC is now at Help talk:IPA/Italian#RfC: Should intervocalic r's be transcribed [r] or [ɾ]?

Should the Italian pronunciation given in articles and on Help:IPA/Italian show [ɾ] (tap/flap) or [r] (trill) for single intervocalic r's in unstressed syllables? 13:46, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

@ReconditeRodent: Wouldn't Help talk:IPA/Italian be a better forum for this RfC to take place in? Also, it is usually good practice for you to cast a !vote yourself summarizing the previous arguments when starting an RfC. Nardog (talk) 14:36, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

@Nardog: Thanks. I'll make one there instead. (Bit busy so it might be a day or two.) ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 15:43, 9 October 2018 (UTC)