Italian All-in-One For Dummies (11 page)

caffè
(kahf-
feh
) (
coffee
)

occhio
(
ohk
-kyoh) (
eye
)

spiaggia
(
spyahj
-jah) (
beach
)

Consonant clusters

Certain consonant clusters have special sounds in Italian. Here they are:

gn
is pronounced as the English (ny). The sound is actually the same as in the Spanish word
señorita
(seh-nyoh-
ree
-tah) (
miss
), or better yet, an Italian word like
gnocchi
(
nyohk
-kee).

gl
is pronounced in the back of the throat like the English word
million
in words like
gli
(lyee) (
the
) and
famiglia
(fah-
mee
-lyah) (
family
). It doesn't sound anything like the English
g.

sc
follows the same rules of the soft and hard
c
from the previous section. It's pronounced as in the English
scooter
when it comes before
a, o, u,
or
h
— that is, as in
scala
(
skah
-lah) (
scale
),
sconto
(
skohn
-toh) (
discount
), and
scuola
(
skwoh
-lah) (
school
). Before
e
and
i,
it's pronounced like the
sh
in
cash.
Examples of this pronunciation include
scena
(
sheh
-nah) (
scene
),
miscela
(mee-
sheh
-lah) (
mixture
), and
scimmia
(
sheem
-myah) (
monkey
).

Stressing Syllables Properly

Stress
is the audible accent that you put on a syllable as you speak it. One syllable always gets more stress than all the others. (A reminder: In this book, stressed syllables appear in
italic.
)

Some words give you a hint as to where to stress them: They have an accent grave (`) or acute (´) above one of their letters. Here are some examples:

caffè
(kahf-
feh
) (
coffee
)

città
(cheet-
tah
) (
city
)

lunedì
(looh-neh-
dee
) (
Monday
)

perché
(pehr-
keh
) (
why
)

però
(peh-
roh
) (
but
)

università
(ooh-nee-vehr-see-
tah
) (
university
)