Have you ever wondered what it is about Italian that makes it so musical? Among other things, the rhythm within the sentences is set by raising and lowering one’s tone of voice, which is dictated by “The accento” which is the Italian word for “accent.”
When you’re learning Italian and someone says the word “accent,” you might consider how you pronounce it.
Accents, like the umlaut (those two dots over some vowels) in German and the tilde (the squiggly line over the letter n) in Spanish, are letter markings that do not exist in English. Though small in size, these markings have a big impact on pronunciation—and, at times, meaning—so don’t overlook them.
Fortunately for the language learner, the use of accent marks is fairly simple, so mastering them isn’t as difficult as you might think.
Most of the Italian words that you will study are pronounced phonetically. When there is a change you will see that the word already include the accent, which will guide you to the proper pronunciation. Remember that vowels play a big part in the italian language, since most words end with a vowel, and often the accent is on top of them.
Vowels play a big part in the Italian language, since most words end in vowels, so this isn’t something to be overlooked.
An accent mark is used in the following cases:
- When a word has two or more syllables and ends in a stressed vowel, like caffè (coffee).
- To show the correct pronunciation of a vowel (long or short).
- To differentiate two words that look the same—we’ll look at some specific examples of this later in the post.
- To show where to place the stress in a word, especially when there is a similar word with the stress in a different place, like àncora (anchor) and ancora (again, still, yet). This is often omitted.
Let’s start by saying that the accent in Italian can be grave (`) or acute (′).
Grave Accent ( ` )
The “accento grave,” or grave accent, is the most common accent mark in Italian. This tiny mark runs diagonally down to the right from the upper left corner. It is frequently found above a vowel and at the end of a word, indicating that the vowel should be pronounced with a short sound: “eh” for the letter e and “ah” for the letter a.
When a word end with the vowels a, i, o, u, the accent is always grave: à, ì, ò, ù.
On the vowels o or e, the accent can be either acute or grave, depending on the pronunciation of the vowel itself.
For example, pèsca (peach) wants an open pronunciation of the “e”, while pésca (he fishes) is pronounced with a closed vowel; for this reason, the accent on the two vowels is different.
The grave accent is also used in words with more than one syllable to emphasize the final vowel, as in “caffè” (coffee), “città” (city), “falò” (bonfire), or “tivù” (tv), and in monosyllabic words with a consonant followed by + i or u + vowel, as in “ci” (this, that), “già” (yet, already), “
Acute Accent ( ´ )
The “accento acuto,” or acute accent, is used only above the letter e and is less common than the grave accent. This mark runs diagonally up to the right from the lower left corner.
When the e is at the end, the accent is acute only in these cases: ché and all of its compounds: (perché, affinché, cosicché, giacché, poiché ecc) and on the compounds of tre (three) for example, ventitré, trentatré ecc.
Extra Tips
The accent goes at the end, in truncated multisyllabic words like città, virtù, longevità and on monosyllabic words such as dà, dì, là, lì, sì, tè, è.
In the middle of a word is not necessary to write the accent, however as general rules we can put a grave one on:
- Plural of words ending in –io such as, adultèri plural of adulterio (adultery); benèfìci, plural of beneficio (benefit); demòni plural of demonio (demon); desidèri plural of desiderio (desire), princìpi plural of principio (principle).
- Plural of words ending in –orio like contraddittorio, pl. contraddittòri. (contradictory).
- Words that are not very common, for example, ecchìmosi (ecchymosis), dàrsena (dock), leccornìa (delicacy), libìdo (libido).
ATTENTION! The accent is not equal to the apostrophe, so even on capital letters, we mustn’t graphically confuse the two.
Syllabic division in Italian: the importance of the accent
In Italian is called “tonic syllable” the syllable in which we can find the accented vowel. This is a very important fact for the Italian word division because, depending on the position of the accent in a word, we can distinguish between:
- Truncated words, if the stress is on the last syllable (parole tronche)
- Words that are stressed in the penultimate syllable (parole piane)
- Proparoxytone words, if the stress is on the third-from-last syllable (parole sdrucciole)
- Words that are stressed on the fourth-from-last syllable (parole bisdrucciole)
- Words that are stressed on the fifth-from-last syllable (parole trisdrucciole)
Let’s make some examples!
- Verità, caffè, etc.…
- Tavoletta, tramonto etc.…
- Psicologo, fascino, etc….
- Telefonata, telefonare, etc…
- Dimenticatelo, ordinaglielo, etc…
With this differentiation you won’t have any more difficulties in reading in Italian! ; )
