Talk:Italian phonology

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)

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)

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!) [[::User:Goochelaar|Goochelaar]] ([[::User talk: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)

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" (/enwiki/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)

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)

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[1]), 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)

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, [[::User:Goochelaar|Goochelaar]] ([[::User talk: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. [[::User:Goochelaar|Goochelaar]] ([[::User talk: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

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)

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)