3 ms·

I'm surprised, how is Italian difficult to pronounce? I'm Italian too. I understand if you mean difficult for somebody who has 0 knowledge (this is true for any

by scotu 8y ago

I'm surprised, how is Italian difficult to pronounce? I'm Italian too. I understand if you mean difficult for somebody who has 0 knowledge (this is true for any language). But besides very few exceptions Italian pretty wysiwyPronounce, no? I feel like I'm blinded by being too close to it :)

toyg 8y ago
As an Italian expat: accent positions are very, very different; and English people associate different "default" sounds to vowels in isolation (e.g. "a"). Even educated persons will struggle if their only source is paper, because a lot of the Latin words that Italian is rooted on, actually have very different pronounciations in English. Also: GL, GH, GN, CH, CE/CI vs CA/CO/CU, double-consonants reinforcing the sound, etc etc...
- bfred_it 8y ago
  Most Italian words pretty much match their IPA representation, minus the pretty regular exceptions like Q, C, G, Z and H and the rare irregularity. It may be difficult to an anglophone, but I'd argue that the phonetic irregularities of English are much more of a problem to a learner. "though/tough/through" never happens in Italian.
  - puzzle 8y ago
    The biggest problem with reading Italian is knowing where the accent goes if it's not mandatory to write, in which case you need to know from context, as in the words at the end of http://www.italianlanguageguide.com/pronunciation/stress-accent-marks.asp http://www.italianlanguageguide.com/pronunciation/stress-acc...
    - scotu 8y ago
      agreed, the accent location (stressed syllabe) comes down to knowing the word, but only a few cases of wrong accent give you a different word... in english you can change the word by mispronouncing the lenght of the first vowel in words like sheet, beach... both long vowel, different way to write it... although I'm sure I'm being imprecise on "long vowel" (don't know anything about phonetics), but I can't think of an example of non-accent based, italian equivalent
- scotu 8y ago
  on the accent, fair enough, that is not straightforward. On the default sounds: I think it's harder in english where the correct sound is not strictly connected to the letters you write the word with. I don't think it's a coincidence that spelling bees are a thing for the english language, but I never heard of one in Italy... Sure, if you have no source to determine the pronunciation of a word, it's hard (as for any language), but once you learn the building blocks you don't strictly need to know the word to know the pronunciation (apart from the accent)

by scotu 8y ago

toyg 8y ago

As an Italian expat: accent positions are very, very different; and English people associate different "default" sounds to vowels in isolation (e.g. "a"). Even educated persons will struggle if their only source is paper, because a lot of the Latin words that Italian is rooted on, actually have very different pronounciations in English. Also: GL, GH, GN, CH, CE/CI vs CA/CO/CU, double-consonants reinforcing the sound, etc etc...

bfred_it 8y ago
Most Italian words pretty much match their IPA representation, minus the pretty regular exceptions like Q, C, G, Z and H and the rare irregularity. It may be difficult to an anglophone, but I'd argue that the phonetic irregularities of English are much more of a problem to a learner. "though/tough/through" never happens in Italian.
- puzzle 8y ago
  The biggest problem with reading Italian is knowing where the accent goes if it's not mandatory to write, in which case you need to know from context, as in the words at the end of http://www.italianlanguageguide.com/pronunciation/stress-accent-marks.asp http://www.italianlanguageguide.com/pronunciation/stress-acc...
  - scotu 8y ago
    agreed, the accent location (stressed syllabe) comes down to knowing the word, but only a few cases of wrong accent give you a different word... in english you can change the word by mispronouncing the lenght of the first vowel in words like sheet, beach... both long vowel, different way to write it... although I'm sure I'm being imprecise on "long vowel" (don't know anything about phonetics), but I can't think of an example of non-accent based, italian equivalent
scotu 8y ago
on the accent, fair enough, that is not straightforward. On the default sounds: I think it's harder in english where the correct sound is not strictly connected to the letters you write the word with. I don't think it's a coincidence that spelling bees are a thing for the english language, but I never heard of one in Italy... Sure, if you have no source to determine the pronunciation of a word, it's hard (as for any language), but once you learn the building blocks you don't strictly need to know the word to know the pronunciation (apart from the accent)