Pronunciation 3 - Doubled Consonants

In Italian, a doubled consonant in a word significantly affects pronunciation. The effect of the doubled consonant is to shorten the preceding vowel and lengthen the consonant itself. This difference in pronunciation can be difficult for English speakers to hear and reproduce, however to Italians the difference is generally very obvious and can often affect the meaning of a word. Consider the following pairs of Italian words that differ only in the doubling of a consonant.

Consonant		Single			Double
Hard C		roca	hoarse		rocca	fortress
Soft C		cacio	cheese		caccio	I hunt
F		tufo	tuff		tuffo	dive
Hard G		lego	I bind		leggo	I read
Soft G		agio	ease		aggio	premium
L		velo	veil		vello	fleece
M		camino	chimney		cammino	path
N		nono	ninth		nonno	grandfather
P		copia	copy		coppia	couple
R		bara	coffin		barra	bar/rod
S		casa	house		cassa	case/box
T		sete	thirst		sette	seven

We really can’t overemphasise the importance of learning how to correctly pronounce words with doubled consonants. You wouldn’t want to mispronounce anno (year) as ano (anus) or penne (a type of pasta) as pene (penis)! We said in Lesson 1 that learning to pronounce all the Italian vowels correctly would get you about two thirds of the way towards an authentic Italian accent. If you add in the correct pronunciation of doubled consonants then you’re about 80% of the way there.

English equivalents

Fortunately most of these doubled consonant sounds can actually be found in English - you just need to know where to look for them. They don’t generally occur within English words, but they do occur between words, when the same or similar consonant sounds appear at the end of one word and the beginning of the next. The following table contains some examples of this. All of these English examples accurately demonstrate both the shortening of the vowel sound and the lengthening of the consonant sound that occur when an Italian consonant is doubled. Note, though, that the quality of the vowels differs between the English and the Italian (in fact most of the long English vowels are actually diphthongs). Also keep in mind that the examples are based on a standard Australian accent - they might not all be valid for your particular variety of English.

Consonant		Single				Double
Hard C		row car		roca		rock car		rocca
Soft C		Kay chore		cacio		cut chore		caccio
F		two four		tufo		tuff four		tuffo
Hard G		lair go		lego		leg go		leggo
Soft G		hey Joe		agio		add Joe		aggio
L		Fay low		velo		fell low		vello
M		came in		camino		come May		cammino
N		no-no		nono		non-negotiable		nonno
P		copious		copia		cup pan		coppia
S		casing		casa		guess so		cassa
T		say tea		sete		set tea		sette

Exercise

The following exercise contains all the Italian words from the previous tables. You should focus on getting a clear distinction between the single and double consonants. If you have any trouble with particular consonants, such as the trilled r, don’t worry too much about it - there are many more pronunciation topics still to come that should help clear up any difficulties.

Next Lesson: Pronunciation 4 - Trilled R