Learn Italian

Learn Italian! ciao - hello, goodbye (familiar) salve - hello addio - goodbye bene - well egli - he (literary) lui - he (common speech), him ella - she (literary) lei - she (common speech), her esso - it (masculine) essa - it (feminine) essi - they (persons or things) loro - them (persons or things), they (common speech, persons) grazie - thank you spiacente - I'm sorry noi - us, we (plural) signore - sir, mister, mr. signora - madame, mrs. signorina - miss tu - you (informal) voi - you (plural, formal and informal) io - I Numbers 1-10 0 1 2 3 4 5 zero uno due tre quattro cinque 6 sei 7 sette 8 otto 9 nove 10 dieci are pronounced as two separate sounds as in English. Pronunciation The Italian alphabet is fairly similar to our own (English, or depending on where you're from, American). The letters K,J,W,X,Y occur only in foreign origin words. gn gli The gli (followed or not by another vowel) in Italian is pronounced more or less as ll in Spanish h However there are words like glicine (flower name), negligente, anglicano in which, for etymological reasons, g and l The Italian h is always silent and as such an Italian speaker won't pronounce it when it occurs in foreign origin words (e.g. hotel). Moreover the letter h in Thus, the Italian word coniglio (rabbit) is pronounced like conihlyo. and the word conigli (rabbits) is pronounced like conihli. The gn is the same sound as Spanish ñ i.e. is the same sound as the ny pair in the word canyon. Thus, signore is pronounced like sin-yore. Italian occurs only in the groups ch and gh (see below) and in the present tense of the verb "to have". Thus, ho ( [I] have ) is pronounced o and hanno ( [they] have) is pronounced anno, the same as the word anno (year). a, e, i, o, u The Italian vowels have only one sound, regardless of what letters they precede or follow, or accent marks on the vowel, with the (minor) exception of e and o. a The a is always pronounced as in the English word car. e The e has the sound of the e in bed. Actually there are two sounds of e : • • The o is always pronounced as the o in the word cold or dog. Here too actually there are two sounds of o : • • an OPEN one, indicated with the grave accent : ò (similar to dog) a CLOSED one, indicated with the acute accent : ó (similar to cold) The same comments made above for the letter e hold. u The Italian u has the sound of the English oo as in too or the English ue as in blue. r As opposed to the English r, which is formed in the back of the mouth with the back of the tongue, the Italian r is formed using the tip of the tongue on the upper palate, behind the front teeth, more like the English d. an OPEN one, indicated with the grave accent : è a CLOSED one, indicated with the acute accent : é Note however that such accents are NOT normally written (unless they are required for tonic reasons), and appear only in dictionaries. Moreover, dictionaries report an "ideal" Tuscan pronunciation which is subject to ample regional variations. For instance the words perché (why) and stélla (star) are usually pronounced in the North as perchè and stèlla. In general a mispronunciation at this level won't be noticed, or if it is noticed (for instance méla (apple) is pronounced everywhere like that, and if you pronounce mèla it will sound funny) you will be understood. There are words in which a difference in accent causes a different meaning, as in pèsca (peach) and pésca (fishing), but in the North we pronounce both words as the first one and are understood everywhere. i The Italian i is the same as the English long e or ee as in see. o Colors Salve, signorina. - Hello, miss. Spiacente, signore. - I'm sorry, sir. And yes, that's about all we can do right now, but these are still good examples of Italian grammatical structure. Notice how similar the above sentences are to English - salve comes first, and then the subject, signorina. You can form the same kinds of sentences using addio and grazie, and signora, in addition to the example sentences above. However, you can't make a sentence like this: Salve, lei. What the above sentence literally says is "hello, you", and while it may be possible to think of times in English when you might say that, in Italian the sentence is meaningless, and people will look at you funny if you say Salve voi! in the middle of a group of Italian-speaking people. You could however say Salve a voi! (literally "hello to you"), although it sounds slightly unusual. bianco(-a) - white giallo(-a) - yellow arancione - orange rosa - pink rosso(-a) - red azzurro(-a) - blue verde - green marrone - brown grigio(-a) - grey nero(-a) - black