Italian orthography


Italian orthography uses a variant of the Latin alphabet consisting of 21 letters to write the Italian language.
Italian orthography is very regular and has an almost one-to-one correspondence between letters or sequences of letters and sounds, that is, it is almost a phonemic orthography. The main exceptions are that stress placement and vowel quality are not notated, and may be voiced or not, and may represent vowels or semivowels, and a silent is used in a very few cases.

Alphabet

The base alphabet consists of 21 letters: five vowels and 16 consonants. The letters J, K, W, X and Y are not part of the proper alphabet, and appear only in loanwords, foreign names, and in a handful of native words—such as the names Jesolo, Bettino Craxi, and Walter, which all derive from regional languages. In addition, grave, acute and circumflex accents may modify vowel letters.
LetterNameDiacritics
A, aa à
B, bbi
C, cci or
D, ddi
E, ee or è, é
F, feffe
G, ggi or
H, hacca ∅ silent
I, ii or ì, í,
L, lelle
M, memme
N, nenne
O, oo or ò, ó
P, ppi
Q, qcu
R, rerre
S, sesse or
T, tti
U, uu or ù, ú
V, vvi, vu
Z, zzeta or

Double consonants are geminated: fatto, palla, bevve etc.

Vowels

The Italian alphabet has five vowel letters,. Of those, only represents one sound value while each of the others has two. In addition, and indicate a different pronunciation of a preceding or .
In stressed syllables, represents both open and close. Similarly, represents both open and close . There is typically no orthographic distinction between the open and closed sounds represented, though accent marks are used in certain instances. There are some minimal pairs, called heteronyms, where the same spelling is used for distinct words with distinct vowel sounds. In unstressed syllables, only the close variants occur.
In addition to representing the respective vowels and, and also typically represent the semivowels and, respectively, when unstressed and occurring before another vowel. Many exceptions exist. An may indicate that a preceding or is 'soft'.

C and G

The letters and represent the plosives and before and before the vowels,,. They represent the affricates and respectively when they precede a front vowel.
The letter can also function within digraphs and to indicate "soft" or before another vowel. In these instances, the vowel following the digraph is stressed, and represents no vowel sound: ciò, giù. An item such as Cia 'CIA', pronounced with stressed, contains no digraph.
For words of more than one syllable, stress position must be known in order to distinguish between digraph or containing no actual phonological vowel and sequences of affricate and stressed. For example, the words camicia "shirt" and farmacia "pharmacy" share the spelling, but contrast in that only the first is stressed in camicia, thus represents with no sound. In farmacia is stressed, so that is not a digraph, but represents two of the three constituents of.
When the "hard" pronunciation or occurs before a front vowel or, digraphs and are used, so that represents or and represents or. The same principle applies to : and represent or and or.
In the evolution from Latin to Italian, the postalveolar affricates and were contextual variants of the velar consonants and. They eventually came to be full phonemes, and orthographic adjustments were introduced to distinguish them. The phonemicity of the affricates can be demonstrated with minimal pairs:
The trigraphs and are used to indicate geminate and, respectively, when they occur before or ; e.g. 'eyes', 'to dress up'.
joins with to form a digraph representing palatal before ), and with to represent with any vowel following. Between vowels these are pronounced phonetically long, as in aglio 'garlic', ogni 'each'. By way of exception, before represents in many words derived from Greek, such as 'wisteria'. before vowels other than represents straightforward.
The digraph is used before and to represent ; before other vowels, is used for. Otherwise, represents, the of which follows the normal orthographic rules explained above.
Other than in a few Northern Italian dialects, intervocalic,, and are always geminated and no orthographic distinction is made to indicate this.

S and Z

and are ambiguous to voicing.
represents a dental sibilant consonant, either or. However, these two phonemes are in complementary distribution everywhere except between two vowels in the same word and, even with such words, there are very few minimal pairs.
always represents voiceless : , , , etc.
represents a dental affricate consonant; either or , depending on context, though there are few minimal pairs.
Between vowels and/or semivowels, is pronounced as if doubled.
is generally voiceless /: , , , , etc.. A major exception is the verbal ending -izzare, in which it is always pronounced , and derived words.

Other letters

In addition to being used to indicate a hard or before front vowels, is also used to distinguish,,, from , , , ; since is always silent, there is no difference in the pronunciation of such words. In loanwords such as , the h is still silent.
The letters J, K, W, X and Y are used for loanwords only, with few exceptions.

Diacritics

The acute accent may be used on and 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 mandatory only in the final syllable; elsewhere, accents are generally found only in dictionaries. Since final is hardly ever close-mid, is very rarely encountered in written Italian.
The grave accent is found on,,,,. It may be used on and when they represent open-mid vowels. The accents may also be used to differentiate minimal pairs within Italian, but in practice this is limited to didactic texts. In the case of final and, both possibilities are encountered. By far the most common option is the grave accent, and, though this may be due to the rarity of the acute accent to represent stress; the alternative of employing the acute, and, is in practice limited to erudite texts, but can be justified as both vowels are high. However, since there are no corresponding low vowels to contrast with in Italian, both choices are equally acceptable.
The circumflex accent can be used to mark the contraction of two vowels, especially a double, final may become. For example, it can be used to differentiate words like and . This is especially seen in older texts, since two homophones are usually distinguished by the context. Current use prefers, with exceptions, a single instead of a double or a with circumflex.