Talk:Italian orthography

The foreign letters

The letters J, K, W, X e Y are not part of the Italian alphabet, so why are they in the list?

Because there were taught and used with the other letters; sometimes were used even in italian words (expecially latin and greek derivates, as "fidejussione" (Surety) from the latin "fideiussio" and "xilofono" (Xylophone) from greek ξύλον xylon (wood) + φωνή phone (sound)), Names (Kevin/Jacopo/Walter/Yara common names in Italy, but not italian wich could be Calvino/Iacopo(Giacomo)/Gualtiero/[not traductable]) and for foreing loanwords (as JoYsticK,) . Nickh ²+, --151.18.144.36 (talk) 00:46, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

The letter'x' is found in some placenames such as Arbatax in Sardinia. The letter 'J' is found in some personal names including indegenousIalian surnames. The placename 'Jesolo' is an error for 'Lesolo' and unknwon to Italians. Barney Bruchstein (talk) 18:05, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Substitutes for foreign letters ??

May 5th, 2007

As a native speaker, I'm quite puzzled by the paragraph Substitutes for foreign letters. Said paragraph seems to suggest that foreign words, before being used in Italian texts, undergo a transformation whereby [for example] the spelling of 'whisky' should turn into something like 'uhischi'. I'm not aware of anything like that; I'm indeed quite used to seeing words imported in their original spelling: whisky, jet, ketchup, etc. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the intent behind the paragraph? Rgiuntoli

Such unchanged loanwords are probably not regarded as Italian, but rather as foreign. FilipeS 18:10, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Phonemes R and RR

Someone asked a question in the main article:

<R> may represent one of two rhotics, an alveolar flap / ɾ/ or an alveolar trill /r/ -- is this one or two phonemes?

I believe they are two phonemes. FilipeS 18:09, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

C

How do the Italians pronounce the name for the letter C? The article says it's "Ci," but is that by the English or Italian pronunciation? In other words, is it "See" or "Chee"? My books on Italian aren't particularly clear on this either.J.J. Bustamante 16:40, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

• it's like "chee". see sounds in italia like "si" - (T.F.S.,from italy) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.48.143.218 (talk) 01:52, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the phonemes of c, In Italian:

• c immediately before y is always pronounced as IPA /s/.[1]
• c immediately before i or e is always pronounced as IPA /tʃ/
• c not immediately before i or e is always pronounced as IPA /k/

However, the article does not say that c in Italian can be pronounced as /s/. Maybe this is because those are not "Italian" words? --Bringback2ndpersonverbs (talk) 19:30, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

C before y is not always pronounced as IPA /s/. It may also be /tʃ/: in the surnames Cya and Cybo, in the name of the liqueur Cynar, in the Latin expression "in cymbalis". "Cyberspazio" may be pronounced in both ways, with /sai-/ or with /tʃi-/, and can also be spelled "ciberspazio". [2] 5.18.238.150 (talk) 21:12, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Letter J's name

Sorry for reverting again, but the only name for letter J in Italian alphabet is i lunga (at most i lungo, in case you consider these names as masculine), not "jay" or "gei". The English word jay, though popular, is still not accepted by dictionaries as a loan word. Even the most flexible Italian linguist, Tullio De Mauro, makes no mention of it. Compare [3]. Best regards, --Erinaceus Italicus (talk) 19:03, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

The only name? I know five: i lunga, i lungo, iod, iota (each of them recognized by Hoepli) plus jay. While jay is not accepted by dictionaries, I believe it's still worth mentioning since everyone uses it. Lupo Azzurro (talk) 11:27, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I do not use it, for it is a useless loanword. In any case, standard Italian is not determined by the popular usage but by a well-educated one (ask the Accademia della Crusca). Finally, please avoid specious arguments: i lunga and i lungo are the same name (though it has two genders), while iod and iota, according to Hoepli[4][5], do not refer to letter j, but to Hebrew letter yodh, Greek iota and the sound /j/. --Erinaceus (talk) 20:03, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Hey, remember that "i lungo" DOES NOT EXIST 'cause in all the Neolatin languages, unlike Greek, letters are always feminine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.48.169.70 (talk) 15:30, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Picture of Dante

It doesn't seem appropriate to have the picture of Dante in the box on the top right. Does this follow any type of standard? If contributor wants to include Dante, perhaps he can create a section on some of the greatest Italian writers pulled from the Italian writers page. Mjpl (talk) 19:04, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Suggestiongs for improvements

Some spellings are missing from the list: gn, gli, diphthongs, triphthongs, doubled consonants, pronunciation of the trilled r and of sc as the English sh.

Explanations of the pronuciation of these spellings would help English speakers who are learning Italian.

A more complete list of Italian spellings is available here: https://www.ipasource.com/diction-help
Cwkmail (talk) 18:50, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Diacritics

What sound does "ì" make, as in Resìna? ZFT (talk) 20:05, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Asterisk in IPA

User:IvanScrooge98 has been adding "*" to some transcriptions, e.g., "scialo /ˈ*ʃaːlo/". I don't believe * is a standard part of IPA, and I don't understand what it means in this context. Can someone explain? --Macrakis (talk) 23:55, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

It's simple: it's true, * is not part of the official IPA, but it is useful to understand syntactic gemination: when it is after a vowel and before a consonant, that consonant should be pronounced twice as long (e.g. città by itself is transcribed as [tʃitˈta*]; hence, città di Napoli is [tʃitˈta ddi ˈnaːpoli]). It's used in many Italian dictionaries: take a look here. --IvanScrooge98 (talk) 08:37, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Very interesting. But:

• I don't think it's useful to include this in the orthography article, since this feature is not reflected in any way in the orthography.
• As I understand it, syntactic gemination is almost entirely regular (i.e., rule-based, conditioned mostly on phonological context, like where the word has its accent), so does not need to be noted for individual words.
• If the non-standard notation is to be used, it should be explained within the article somewhere.

Thanks for your contributions! --Macrakis (talk) 05:39, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

I just added links to Help:IPA for Italian in the very first section, so that a reader who doesn't understand the asterisk can check out (inside the help article there is also a short explanation about syntactic gemination and the link to the main article). --IvanScrooge98 (talk) 10:21, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, that covers my third point. But my first and second remain. What does syntactic gemination have to do with Italian orthography, the topic of this article? And why notate it if it is regular? In English, the "p" of "pin" is aspirated and the "p" of "spin" is not, but this is not notated in phonemic transcriptions //, only in close phonetic ones []. --Macrakis (talk) 10:49, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

• Orthography and pronunciation are closely related in languages such as Italian, Spanish or Polish, where to one sound correspond one or at most two spellings, unlike in other languages like French or English. Also, it is useful to mark when any type of consonant gemination occurs in certain languages, to be easier to understand for an English speaker: if scialo was rendered as /ˈʃaːlo/, maybe you wouldn't believe that lo scialo is pronounced /lo ʃˈʃaːlo/; so on English Wikipedia * becomes more necessary than on the Italian one. Syntactic gemination, by the way, isn't completely regular like the aspiration of p in English: for instance, di Dio ("God's") and qualche volta ("sometimes") are read /di dˈdiːo/ and /ˈkwalke vˈvɔlta/. --IvanScrooge98 (talk) 12:05, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

I realize that Italian spelling is largely phonetic, except for the voicing of s/z, the quality of vowels, and the position of stress. But I don't see how that is relevant to notating syntactic gemination in the phonemic glosses in this article. There is, after all, a separate article on Italian phonology. As for the irregularities in syntactic gemination, it's an interesting topic, but again completely irrelevant to orthography, and not necessary to notate in the phonemic transcription of every Italian word that is subject to it. And the irregularities may be as much about the context as about the individual word. --Macrakis (talk) 13:05, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

OK, I understand that too many asterisks can be troublesome: so I've just removed them from the article (except those linking to the IPA help page). --IvanScrooge98 (talk) 13:34, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

This phenomenon has nothing to do with orthography. The asterisks are just confusing and not useful to the reader, with or without the link to IPA for Italian. And I think every case in the article is regular (stressed monosyllable etc.), so the notation adds no information. --Macrakis (talk) 08:03, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Relevance of WP Christianity & WP Catholicism?

Greetings, Wondering what these two WikiProjects have to do with this article? I just don't see the connection. Should these be removed from this talk page? Regards,  JoeHebda (talk)  19:19, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

ZZ

Does anyone know the rules for the pronunciation of ⟨zz⟩ (pazzo, razzo, ragazzo, etc.)? I searched it in Google but I couldn't find anything. Esszet (talk) 20:58, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Razzo's pronunciation is mentioned in the article but illogically presented as an example of single z "⟨z⟩ is pronounced as if doubled".

Your other common words as well as avvezzo are missing. --Espoo (talk) 06:02, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Never mind, I found this. I'll incorporate it into the article within the next day or two. Esszet (talk) 18:51, 5 October 2017 (UTC)