This is a crash course in Italian pronunciation. Our aim is not to get you to sound like a native - for that, have a look at our in-depth pronunciation guide. Here you’ll just learn enough to make yourself intelligible to a native Italian speaker.
Vowels
In Italian, a single written vowel is always pronounced as a single pure vowel sound, sometimes called a monophthong. A pure vowel is constant and unvarying from the beginning to the end. Listen to the following examples that contain just these pure vowel sounds.
Vowel
Example
Example
a
sale
fame
e
mela
bene
i
vivo
cima
o
solo
cosa
u
fumo
luce
When a more complex vowel sound is required, such as a diphthong, two or more written vowels are used. When you see a group of written vowels, simply pronounce each vowel individually, sliding quickly from one to the next. Listen to the following examples.
vowel combination
example
ia
fianco
ie
niente
iu
fiume
ua
quale
ui
guida
uo
buono
ai
mai
ei
sei
oi
voi
au
causa
iei
miei
uai
guai
Consonants
Most Italian consonants are very similar to English consonants. So similar, in fact, that you can just pronounce most of them as you would in English and you’ll be understood perfectly. There are only five consonants that really require any special treatment: h, r, c, g and z.
The Letter H
This one is easy - the letter h is never pronounced in Italian. It is always silent. It does, however, sometimes affect the pronunciation of other letters (see the section on c and g below).
The Letter R
The Italian r is the only Italian sound that doesn’t have a close English equivalent. The Italian r is trilled, which means you pronounce it by vibrating the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth, just behind your front teeth. Listen to the following examples.
Italian
English
burro
butter
ferro
iron
guerra
war
sorriso
smile
The Letters C and G
The letters c and g can each be pronounced in two different ways. When they are followed by an i or an e they have a soft sound. When followed by any other letter they have a hard sound.
soft c
hard c
soft g
hard g
centro
cane
gente
gatto
cibo
cosa
gita
gonna
sociale
forchetta
giorno
ghiro
Notice that sometimes an i is inserted after a c or g to give it a soft sound and sometimes an h is inserted to give it a hard sound.
There are also some special letter combinations involving c and g that have special pronunciations.
s + soft c
gn
gli
uscita
gnocchi
egli
scena
cognato
taglia
sciarpa
lasagne
moglie
prosciutto
magnifico
maglione
The Letter Z
The letter z can be pronounced in two ways - like the English combination dz(voiced) or like the combination ts(unvoiced). You can’t work out from the spelling which pronunciation is used in a particular word, but the voiced sound is more common at the beginning of a word and the unvoiced sound is more common in the middle of a word.
