Talk:Italian language

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[edit] Official Language of Italy

20 December 2006

I've seen it casually mentioned that Italian is the official language of Italy. It seems like an obvious match, certainly, but does anyone have any support for this claim? Credible support would include a statement of Italian as official language on a government website, embassy website, an international organization with Italy as a member, etc. Any ideas, folks?

Italian is recognized as official language of Italy («lingua ufficiale dello Stato») at least by one law having constitutional rank in the country: the Statute of the bilingual region Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, which you can find here (art. 99). Furthermore, criminal and civil procedure codes prescribe Italian as the language to be used in trials. --Llayumri 19:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
...But it is not the official language of Italy. A project of law about that is being examined with the approvation of all the parties, with the exception of the Communist Refoundation Party (left wing) and the Northern League (right wing). The CRP mantains that an official language would be a limitation for the integration of the imigrants. The NL sees in that a penalization for the local autonomies. --Stefano 21:38, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Site

14 December 2006

I am constantly adding new things to my site on the Italian language: www.italian-language-study.org . I have now included a large section on Italian culture, with many photographs. The sections dealing with the language have been illustrated by maps and there is a section on cooking terms.

I am the author of http://www.italian-language-study.org where I discuss several aspects of the Italian language and where I also list Italian words which now are used in a large part of the world. I was wondering if it might be included in the Italian language links' page of Wikipedia. (12 April 2006)

Richard willmer 08:45, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Liked site. Added link... my only doubt was the ordering of external links. I placed it before those relating to learning the language on the grounds that this link's topic is closest to that of the Wikipedia article as a whole. Hope this criterion is agreed upon. --Ph7five 10:59, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How many Speakers?

This page read that Italian was "spoken by about 62 million people", now it reads "spoken by about 58 million people." Which is the correct number? MB 17:28 15 May 2003 (UTC)

Most estimates I see are between 60 and 65 millions people, so I'm putting in the old version At18 19:05 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with the Map of italian Language

The map incorrectly paints entire countries such as libya, ethiopia and somalia. Unless someone has statistics showing a substantial percentage (may be 10%, 25% or even 50%) speak italian in these countries this map goes. In order to paint carelessly entire countries, the statistics with correct references must be shown.

For instance references must be shown as to how many italian speakers are there in libya, somalia and ethiopia as of 2005-2006. Any statistics older than 2000-2001 should not be included.

Suggestion: The blue paint on african countries should be removed and replaced with one or two dots on those african countries for which there are references, otherwise this blatantly wrong depiction should not be reverted.

I strongtly suspect that not more than 1-2% of population in any of these african countries speak italian even though they have colonial experience with italy. Their education system etc is all in arabic and or somali, or ethiopian and english is second most spoken language.

TOO many random dots: I also have problems with too many dots on australia, and latin america. For greater accuracy each dot should represent a number.

For example one square should represent : 1 million or something like that. Dots or squares should not be too big so as to overwhelm the map itself. This can give erroneous view so that it may seem like a large percentage of people in australia speak italian, but inreality less than 1% speak italian.

Again, references should be provided.

Some suggestions on dots: I tend to think that unless at least 1% of population speaks a particular language there is no need to provide a dot. Otherwise we would have to provide dots all over the world, since in almost every country there may be italian consulates, italian tourists and italian speaking native guides, etc etc, italian business offices.

Please note that unreferenced map with randomly assigned square dots and randomly painted countries will be deleted. Libya and somalia have very few italian speakers. I do not have precise information, so I do not want to speculate, but I strongly suspect, italian is not the secondary language and in any case not even 1% speak italian in these countries. The dots are not quantitative. They MUST be quantitative and must have references from trustworthy sources. Samstayton 23:50, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The map just gives a general outline of countries where Italian is somehow spoken and understood, due to historical reasons, expatriates and colonial past, and without any quantitative meaning. In this sense there's nothing wrong with it, so i'm going to restore it. --Fertuno 23:09, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

This is an encylopedia and not a sketch book of general outlines. When maps are drawn there should be some sense of precision and accuracy. Like I said before, there are italian speakers everywhere in the world. So should we paint the whole world as italian speaking??? So there are a lot of problems with this map. I am going to remove it till its fixed with quantitative information. Samstayton 09:26, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Somalia: In Somalia Italian is an official language with English and Arabic. (the term "official" should not be overestimated here, since there is no stable government able to define what is "official" for the region we describe as "Somalia"). It is not only a language of teaching but also a lingua franca for numerous people from different tribes. However, since the illiteracy rate in Somalia is astronomical high, most people do only speak their tribal language, not even Arabic or English. So, dependent on the number of real speakers, Somalia should be left blank at all regarding any of its "official languages"... Furthermore, since there is no stable government in Somalia, and the Supreme Islamic Courts Council (which currently controls large parts of the country) aims to establish an islamistic state with Arabic to become its official language, no definitve censuses can be conducted or have ever been conducted. --BlueMars 18:49, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree with you. Somalia has many arabic speakers and italian is hardly spoken in this country. Sam is the situation with Libya where you hardly see anyone speaking italian. No statistical data exists. Had there been many italian speakers, there should have been statistics on many language related webpages or information in libraries. I have not been able to find even a single online or printed source where italian listed either as majority or minority language in libya or eritrea or even ethiopia. Some people are so exited that they forget the reality and foolishly depict entire regions as italian speaking. This irrational exuberism should be checked. Samstayton 09:40, 26 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Italian is spoken in 30 countries?

Which are these other 29 countries, where they speak Italian? I think that's not corrext! --194.114.62.38

Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Egypt, Eritrea, France, Germany, Israel, Libya, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Paraguay, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Romania, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay, USA, Vatican State according to ethnologue.com. Obviously this includes significant emmigrant populations, and it is only an official language in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican and Croatia and an official regional language in Slovenia.
Daniel Robinson 8 April 2006, 14:42 (GMT)

I know that the Italian isn't a simple language (for not italian people, evidently!!!), but I don't think that isn't so absurd that the Italian is spoken in so many countries! ;-) Ida82 18:48, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ranking flawed

The text says Italian is spoken by 62 millions speakers, while the table claims it is spoken by 55 millions. The table further claims this is sufficient for the 27th place worldwide, while the list of 25 most commonly spoken languages ends with Egyptian Arabic, spoken by 43 millions. The list admits being out of date, but I doubt it was correct for 1996 as well. Or at least I cannot see how can the demographics of Italy account for 50% increase in less than 10 year span. --Peterlin 10:00, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Maybe it would be good to divide this statistic into number of speakers in Italy, number of speakers in Switzerland and number of speakers in emmigrant communities. Chameleon 11:57, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] To-do notice forgotten in text?

The first paragraph of the "Sounds" section sounds quite odd:

"Description of the sound set of the language. Can include phoneme charts and example words for each phoneme like in French language. If there is significant discussion here, it is probably best to divide the section into vowels and consonants subsections."

It sounds like a "TODO" notice from a pattern article was forgotten into the finished article.

[edit] Phoneme listing and comparison?

The article now lists 7 vowel phonemes, then later inconsistently says it has 5 vowel phonemes similar to Japanese. (The Japanese comparison section also says Japanese lacks geminate consonants, when in fact Japanese has geminates quite similar to those of Italian)

I've clarified it, I hope, by mentioning the 5 'default' vowel sounds. There are 7 Italian vowel sounds, but only 5 are used by default, the other two are almost allophones -- mostly only college-educated Italians even know of their existence, but most Italian speakers only hear 5. This is implicitly admitted in the "Vowels" section where we take pains to show the distinction of the extra two. Steverapaport 19:14, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
P.S. You're right about the geminates, I even noticed the error and fixed it before I saw your comment! But thanks for noticing. Steverapaport
This also is wrong. I have removed the remark on Italians being able to distinguish only 5 vowel phonemes because all Italians can distinguish them, and elaborated on the subject. Regional usage varies, but all Italians employ both phonemes---consistently within the same city/region, but inconsistently throughout Italy. On the other hand, a correct usage exists (the Tuscan one, listed in vocabularies) and for a few words exchanging the sounds results in different meanings. Would someone please improve the English, however?

We have 7 vowel sounds: a, è, é, i, o, ò, u, but five vowels: a e i o u. I'm sorry but we use all the seven vowel sounds and all the italian speakers hear these sounds. And they aren't allophones! E.g. pésca it's different from pèsca (one is a fruit the other means "fishing", guess the mean! :) ); corso from còrso (one is a man from Corsica the other means "I have run"); sétte from sètte... The problem is we usually don't write the accents ( but we must write the accent in the last letter of some words: città, or in some verbal tenses: è), and the pronunciation - the sound - of the vowels changes in every "regione". In fact we can recognize from where an italian come from simply hearing how he pronounces the vowels. Last but not least: if you say: "vado a pesca" even if you go wrong in the accent, an italian can understand what you are doing (and where you came from!). Ciao, Dedo

[edit] Italian closest to Latin?

Article says that Italian is the closest to "Latin" of the "major Romance languages". Depends how you measure "closest" I guess, but I'd guess that, of the major Romance languages, Romanian and Sardinian is closer in many ways to Classical Latin than Italian is. From the Romanian page: "the grammar is roughly similar to that of Latin, keeping declensions and the neuter gender, unlike any other Romance language." Sounds closer to me. On the other hand if you say "closest to Vulgar Latin" Italian would probably win hands down. Any other opinions from those better informed? Steverapaport 19:14, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

ok if nobody objects I'm changing it.

Yes, mention "closest to Vulgar Latin". Peter O. (Talk) 21:16, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Be attention,the romanian grammar it'quite similar to the latin grammar but not the romanian vocabulary. Italian, French and Romanian too, are only - in different ways - the Latin in the XXI century. The German grammar is roughly similar to latin too, but German doesn't come from Latin! The English also has the neuter gender but doesn't come from Latin... Remember that italian uses classical latin words: e.g. equino, and vulgar latin too:e.g. cavallo, and verbal tenses quite similar to the classic one. There is another problem, what is the vulgar latin? And where was it spoken? The vulgar Latin of Gallia was different from that of Italia or Hiberia or Dacia! There was a military latin - not all the roman soldiers spoke currently latin - and a court latin and so on...And Latin was spoken for about 1000 years in all the Mediterranean zone (mainly in Italy)...What is the Vulgar Latin? I think that all the neolatin languages are close to the latin and there isn't one closer than the others; more, all the neolatin languages are closer to the vulgar latin than to the classic one. Ciao, Dedo


--- Romanian is closest to Latin? It's certainly has latin roots, but not exactly the closest. I speak Italian and Russian, spent time in Bucharest and was taken aback at listening to Romanian. An odd combination of a latin language mixed with a healthy dose of slavic words, phrases and endings. I'm not sure how anyone could claim it's the "closest" to latin.

12 AUG 05

That Italian is generally closer to Latin has been stated time and time again by scholars like Segre and Bruni. Of course, the devil is in the details: some dialects from Sardinia for example keep the sound k for centum and the -us ending and many other languages preserve traits of classical latin that Italian has lost. Overall, however it is one of the most archaic languages with respect to latin. That was because latin was used for a longer time here than in other countries, and because the humanist tradition has been traditionally stronger and writers were traditionally more conservative. Even Dante's De Divina Eloquentia is still on the defensive in the early 1300s, a time when most people still used Latin as their standard. Only after Dante's death did scholar look to vernacular with some respect. --Wikipedius 19:54, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't think anyone has dealt with my point above yet. Romanian grammar still seems closer to Classical Latin than Italian grammar does, declensions and all. Anonymous 12 Aug above mentions that Romanian pronunciation and vocabulary are not similar to Latin, and that's agreed. Wikipedius mentions that Italian scholars believe Italian to be closest to Latin, but doesn't say why, and doesn't mention any non-biased (non-Italian) scholars who think so. It still seems evident to me that Italian is closest to Vulgar Latin, and that Italian is closest to Latin with respect to vocabulary and pronunciation, but Romanian still looks like the winner to me with respect to grammar! I think anyone wanting to refute this should first compare Latin grammar with Romanian and Italian grammar. --Steve Rapaport 15:19, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Besides the wikipedia quote on Romanian grammar are there any scholars that comment on Romanian grammatic similarity over the other romance languages? Not that I'm arguing, it would be interesting if true. All we have is a wikipedia self-reference to back the assertion along with an individual's opinion. I'm not sure a wikipedia quote and personal experience really qualify as argument to put that as an addition to a wikipedia page on Italian. Most agree that at least a respectable number of scholars have commented on the closeness of Italian and Latin, but there's no corresponding source given for the Romanian/Latin grammar issue. Furthermore arbitrarily accusing Italian scholars of bias on the basis of their being Italian just doesn't seem justified. Do UK scholars who study Old English suffer from the same accusation of bias vis-a-vis their take on contemporary English? Probably not. It would be nice to see something more concrete. Virgil61 23:17, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Good points, Virgil! So I offer a little evidence. I'm not biased either way, being a foreign-language Italian speaker and having no Romanian or ties to it. But just the basics found from a simple google search on their respective grammars:
(This should be a table but I'm too lazy to make one.)
  • Classical Latin is a synthetic inflectional language, its grammar has 6 cases for nouns, 3 genders (masculine, feminine, and neutral), and adjectival agreement by gender and number. It has no articles. Verb conjugation is about the same for all three languages.
  • Romanian is also a synthetic inflectional language, its grammar has 6 cases for nouns, 3 genders (masculine, feminine, and neutral), and adjectival agreement by gender and number. Its articles are attached to the end of the noun.
  • Italian is an analytic_language inflectional language. Its grammar has 1 (or 2) cases for nouns, 2 genders (masculine and feminine, vestigial neutral), and adjectival agreement by gender and number. It has a full complement of separate articles.
So in addition to the comments under Romanian grammar, the most obvious evidence is that the grammars are just more similar. See also Morphological_typology. And the difference is a matter of degree, not absolutes as I'm implying above. But the amount of difference is pretty obvious --Steve Rapaport 08:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Romanian closest to Latin? Who says such garbage? Romanian is the most Slavish Romance language, not the language closest to Latin! The Romanian grammar is rather Balkanian than really Latin. The only language closest to Latin, nowaday, is Italian. -- Michel Went

[edit] Syllables ending with "L", "R" etc...

I'm not a linguist, so I'm not sure of the right definition of syllable; however, for what I learned at school, then it can end also with "L". For example: mol/to; cal/do; col/to; col/ti/va/to; mal/to. The same with "R". For example: car/ta; por/ta. or "S" e.g. pes/to; or "F" e.g. naf/ta. I think some for other consonants some examples can also be found. --Ggonnell 15:06, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Certainly. The examples you gave are correct, except for "pesto", which is conventionally "pe/sto". To me, "nafta" also sounds as "na/fta", but that's just me, as the correct hypenation is certainly "na/fta".
A practical rule is to ask oneself: "is there any word that begins with this syllable?". As you'll see, there is no Italian word that begins with ft- (hence, it's "naf/ta", not "na/fta"), but there are words that begin with st- (hence "pe/sto", not "pes/to".
LjL 12:49, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Some examples: pa-sta, but bas-so; la-scio but las-so. However, na-fta is impossible (only naf-ta). --Wikipedius 15:36, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm an italian girl and na-fta is impossible 'cause consonants must be always divide, so it's right naf-ta. the rule say that consonant -s must be always a capo, that is to say -s must be always divide from consonant or vocal before. Howewer It's wrong " A pratical rule is to ask onesel: "is there any word that begins with this syllable?"" because in italian there are words that begins with ft-, for example ftalato, ftalo, ftiriasi, ftaleina, ftalica and others. -- Mara

[edit] Closest to Latin

Hello to everyone, I would want to add some comments about the problem "Ïtalian closest to Latin". I read some books on Italian Linguistics and I must confirm that really Italian is closer to Latin than any other Romance language. The reason is by force historical: in fact so-called Italian was the last Romance language to become a real spoken-language. It remained a written language, a Cultural language for a lot of century. This fact permitted to keep almost unchanged a lot of characteristics of Vulgar and Classical Latin. Moreover, being a cultural language it systematically and continuously enriched its vocabulary and sintax with Classical words and sintax, more than any other romance languages. The sintax is considered one of the major footsteps in evaluating closeness to Latin: in fact -the reason is always Italian has been only a written language for many years- Romance languages have all paratactic construction of the period, but Italian has conserved hypotactic construction and freedom in disposing words in sentences quite close to Latin one, although Italian, as the most of Romance languages, has lost declensions. Hi

VeniVidiVici

Well,i'm italian and from what i know of latin i can say that italian is the closest thing to vulgar latin rather than classical latin --Philx 15:10, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Assimilation

The article said that diphthongs are only in the form "semivowel + vowel". Apparently, "vowel + semivowel" also does fine, so I've changed it. But there is this paragraph about "assimilation" that is a bit puzzling. It says that Italians would tend to pronounce English "strive" without a diphthong, i.e. like Italians pronounce "naïve". Well... no, definitely no.

  1. "Naïve" in Italian is not only pronounced without a diphthong -- it's got stress on the "i". I don't think anyone would pronounce "strive" with a stress on the second mora (so to say).
  2. In any case, the diphthong in "strive" would, I think, be pronounced as a diphthong by just about any Italian: that's because the diphthong "ai" exists in Italian, contrary to what the article said before. Just think of the words "mai", "fai", "vai" and, for other similar diphthongs, "fui", "coi", "rei".


LjL 12:57, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

guilty! Colpa mia! The bit about italians pronouncing foreign diphthongs as dieresis is likely true (though unsourced). The example I chose was incorrect, since as you say, "ai" is a diphthong in Italian. (I was misled because italians use that diphthong in english words that normally use different ones, like "like". ("Like" is NOT pronounced with /ai/ in English by native speakers.) )
Anyway, I think the assertion of dieresis in place of foreign diphthongs may still be true, but we need to find an example of a foreign diphthong not found in Italian first.
--Steve Rapaport 20:43, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Well my Italian girlfriend can neither pronounce nor aurally distinguish the words "ship" and "sheep", or more amusingly, "shit" and "sheet".
--Daniel Robinson 14:32, 8 April 2006 (GMT)
None of those words contain diphtongs. Sheep and sheet contain long vowels, which are not distinguished in Italian.
82.59.213.199 11:37, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Funnily enough when I speak to her they do - I have an Australian accent. But you are right of course about the reason for them not being distinguished, and I have just recognised myself as being that annoying person who is too ignorant to follow a conversation but jumps in with a random anecdote when something someone says reminds him of it.
On the original topic, the only British English dipthong that my Italian-English dictionary is unable to reference back to an Italian word is the aU like in coke or brooch.
Daniel 20:08, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Double (long) consonants in French

Can someone provide evidence for long consonants in French? The article previously said that Italian had them, in contrast to e.g. French and Spanish; it now says that Italian and French have them, in contrast with Spanish. The article gemination doesn't mention French as a language with distinctive gemination. Of course, French does have "double consonants" in the sense that the same consonant letter can be written down twice in a row... but that's certainly not what was meant with "double (or long) consonant". Also, this makes me think that we should probably get rid of the word "double" altogether, and only talk about "geminated (or long) consonants", except for later specifying that geminated consonants are written as double in Italian. LjL 12:22, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Some French double consonant words:
-attraper
-attaquer
-accueil
-attention
-pomme
-bonne
-tellement
-occipital
Of course, it can't be called "germinated", but spanish has no double consonants beside LL which becames a letter by itself (they are 29 letters in Spanish Alphabet), so there's no double consonants in Spanish while they are double consonants in French and Italian.

Not true; there was an reform that removed "LL" and "CH" from the alphabet, and dictionaries now list words with those digraphs in the normal (English) alphabetical order. LjL 15:31, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

We should split the double and germinated concept in the article.

I don't think we should. We're talking about Italian here, and there's nothing strange about Italian having double consonants (meaning written double consonants) -- almost every language written in the Latin alphabet has them. What is strange about Italian is that it has long (geminated) consonants, which are relatively rare among the world's languages. LjL 15:31, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

There's still some sound shiftings in French when a consonant is doubled. In French, a S between to vowels is pronounced like a Z, so a double S will cancel the effect of that rule. A double C is sometimes pronounced like X and a double L preceded by a I will be pronounced like a Y.

Sure, same happens with S in Italian. But that's completely uninteresting, as things like that happen in English, as well, and in a lot of other languages. What's important is that almost all consonants in Italian, when written double, are pronounced as long. This doesn't happen in French or Spanish. LjL 15:31, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

It is incorrect to put the characteristics of double consonants of French and Spanish together.

Perhaps it's incorrect if one's discussing French vs Spanish, but this is an article about Italian, where the differences between French and Spanish don't matter at all. The case at hand is that Italian has long consonants -- an interesting feature worthy of mentioning -- while French and Spanish don't. You do realize, don't you, that French and Spanish were simply put as examples, and you could remove them entirely and use different examples, or no examples at all (although this wouldn't be particularly desirable)? LjL 15:31, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

French's double consonant proprieties are closer to Italian than Spanish. This part of the article needs to be cleaned up, but we must keep the distinction between French and Spanish. -Maxime Primeau

No, they aren't closer. In French, single C is /c/, while double C is /cs/; in Italian, single S is sometimes /z/, while double S is /s/; in Spanish, single L is /l/, while double L is /lh/ (using an invented phonetic alphabet, but it should be clear enough).
In all three languages, a double consonant may be pronounced differently from a single. Furthermore, this also happens in English, German, Swedish, etc. But, in Italian, most consonants become long when doubled, which doesn't happen in either French or Spanish.
LjL 15:31, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

In Spanish, double L (the only case of pseudo double consonant) is a single letter, see Spanish alphabet and the case of U and W in english. I maintain that French's double consonant proprieties are closer to Italian than Spanish because in Spanish, there's no double consonant at all. However, you're right, there's no need to mention it in that article.

-Maxime Primeau
Spanish alphabet says that the traditional alphabet includes those "letters". However, it also says that the Spanish Academy has discontinued the use, even though people still sometimes/often spell the old way (as with all things traditional). Oh, and by the way, even if "ll" were considered a single letter, "rr" has always been two letters in Spanish; nevertheless, "r" and "rr" denote different phonemes (not even different lengths of the same phonemes, as in Italian, but different phonemes: one is a flap, the other a trill).
My main point was indeed that there was no need to mention "French vs Spanish doubles" in the article. However, if you like, let's look at this in some more detail. You can easily see that French "c"/"cc", French/Italian "s"/"ss", Spanish "l"/"ll" and so on are manifestations of the same phenomenon: a change (sometimes radical) in pronunciation when letters are doubled. Instead of this somewhat odd (but historically justified) usage, we could simply use more graphemes (letters): Spanish "ñ" is an example of this kind of situation.
This hasn't happened with Spanish "ll", French "cc" and French/Italian "ss", but that doesn't mean anything, except that there might have been various historical reasons for this difference.
Now, why do you maintain that French doubles are closer to Italian than to Spanish? I guess you maintain that simply because French writes doubles in many places where Italian also writes them, but not Spanish: e.g. "attenzione", "attention", "atención", or "attaccare", "attaquer", "atacar".
But the similarity ends in writing: while "attenzione" is actually pronounced with a "double" (long, geminate) "t" in Italian, "attention" and "atención" in French and Spanish are both pronounced with the same, single, short "t".
So, I suppose I can see why you see French doubles are more similar to Italian, but keep in mind that it only works with writing -- pronunciation isn't involved. Think for example of "fato" (fate) vs "fatto" (fact): could you tell them apart if they were pronounced with a French accent (I mean, using only phonemes that belong to French)? LjL 20:51, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

In French, The T wouldn't be long. Fatto would be pronounced like Fato. It only works for writing.

-Maxime Primeau


[edit] long consonants in French

Phonetically I'm pretty sure french has no long consonants (in the sense that they would be phonemic). None of the written double consonants are long or geminated when pronounced. See the Double Consonants section in [1]. So the t in attraper and atroce are pronounced the same way.---moyogo

If you compare words like "belle" and "bêle", /bɛl/ and /bɛːl/ or "elle" and "aile", /ɛl/ and /ɛ:l/, you'll hear that the consonant is irrelavant do differentiate between the pairs. The length of the vowel matters. ---moyogo
I don't think the vowel length matters either, in fact. Both are /ɛl/, according to my ear, as well as to the dictionaries I've looked in (Petit Robert, for example). Mats 09:58, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Triphthongs can only have 'i' as the last vowel"

Is this true? Right now, I can't think of any word that has a "u" as the last vowel of a triphthong, but my instinct tells me that "iau" or things like that follow the normal pattern of Italian pronunciation. Does someone know of a word with such a triphthong, or does anybody know that it definitely doesn't exist?

Even if it doesn't exist -- excuse my ignorance -- but can we really say that "all triphthongs in Italian must end with 'i'"? I mean, my "instinct" tells me that "iau" could well exist, as opposed to, for example, "tg", which my "instinct" would find strongly un-Italian. Assuming that my instinct about this is shared by a majority of Italians, shouldn't we say something to the effect that "triphthongs can end in 'i' or 'u', but it just so happens that there are currently no words with the 'u' version"?

I'm not going to write this into the article, don't worry, but I'm just curious... is there a linguistic term for such a thing? Does it actually make any linguistic sense at all?

LjL 00:35, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, the fact than an unstressed u cannot be the last phoneme in an Italian word greatly restricts the number of the words where it might be, so it's unlikely that any such word exists. The possible triphtongs ending in -u are: iau, ieu, uau, ueu, uiu (and the last one sounds definitely un-Italian to me.) Theoretically AFAIK even the quadriphtong "iuòi" could exist, but I definitely believe that no word uses it.--Army1987 09:17, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Mmm, let me rack my brains a little...aiuto ("help"), aiuola ("hedge"), vuoi ("you want"). Yes, it's possible, one catch, though: an I or a U surrounded by vowels grows into a semi-consonant, as in You or Woman so sometimes the diphthong is only apparent. If you have more questions feel free to ask me. I appreciate your interest and i would like to help if i can. --Wikipedius 03:04, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

You don't get a triphthong every time you put three vowels together. I think the sentence after explains it nicely: Triphthongs are limited to a diphthong plus an unstressed "i". (e.g. miei, tuoi.) Other sequences of three vowels exist (e.g. noia, febbraio), but they are not triphthongs; they consist of a vowel followed by a diphthong. So to use your example of aiuto, that's three syllables: a/iu/to, accent on /iu/, which is a diphthong. In the case of "iau", if it existed, (as in "il gatto dice miau") it would be a triphthong I think. Steve Rapaport 20:05, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Can one say it is a triphthong when either i or u become consonantic? Your syllabic division is phonetically correct, but the orthographic rule goes, you cannot put a break in between vowels: aiu-to. That's odd, isn't it. --Wikipedius 21:16, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, that's odd, but spelling rules and pronunciation rules, even in Italian, don't have to match exactly. Even if you can't break the syllables that way for orthographic reasons, it's obvious listening to the word that anyone pronounces the /aiu/ as two syllables. A triphthong, like "miei", is pronounced as one syllable. But about the consonantic i and u, I don't think that's what's happening here,( "ah-yuu-to" ), but even if it is, I believe the consonantic i or u would mark the beginning of a syllable, so could never be the middle of a triphthong.
By the way, what question of mine have you answered recently, Wikipedius?
--Steve Rapaport 21:36, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, Steve, I just meant to help (sincerely), that's why you see all the edits. "Question"="issue". Phonetically, the division is right, we were just on a different wavelength. One thing though:

"In general all letters are clearly pronounced, and always in the same way. (The only notable allophonic variations in the pronunciation of phonemes in standard Italian are the assimilation of /n/ before consonants, and vowel length (vowels are long in stressed open syllables, and short elsewhere) — compare with the enormous number of allophones of the English phoneme /t/".

Which long vowels? We don't have any. --Wikipedius 22:23, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

First, I don't think I wrote that bit. (Did I? I honestly don't even think I believe it) But regardless, I'd read "long" here in the sense of English or Swedish, in which a "long" vowel isn't longer in duration, but changes sound instead. The only examples would therefore be the 'couples' (/e/ - /ɛ/) and (/o/ - /ɔ/), and they're adequately discussed elsewhere. I think the bold sentence you quote is unnecessary and probably wrong. Second, I'm not at all offended, I was just looking for the questions because you mentioned them on my page. Thanks for bringing the discussions here to my attention, there are several errors I'm probably responsible for. --Steve Rapaport 00:21, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not a linguist so forgive me if I'm being stupid, but isn't there a tripthong ending in o in ciao? --Daniel 14:52, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The i in "cia", "cio", "ciu" changes the consonant into an affricate, but it is not pronounced as a vowel, just as the h in "che" and "chi" changes the consonant into a plosive, but is not pronounced per se. I'll change the article to make this fact clearer. 82.59.213.199 11:48, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
In addition to this, ao is a hiatus, not a diphthong.
Anyway, all Italian grammars consider iuo as a triphthong, though rare and almost in disuse. It's a variant of io that may occur in few words: paiolo > paiuolo, aiola > aiuola and so on. So the article's statement about triphthongs is not completely correct. Best regards. --Llayumri 20:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Italian and Florentine

Thanks for pointing out the importance of the Sicilian tradition in the shaping of Dante's volgare illustre (it is sometimes neglected). Though the basis for the Italian language is Florentine, influences from other dialects are remarkable. In addition, besides the Sicilian influence as you justly pointed out, many more Latin words were added. The result is a melting pot or koinè: after Pietro Bembo the influence from other dialects has been growing (starting from the 1600s) and after unification has seen the introduction of many more non-Florentine loans. --Wikipedius 20:42, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Italian-American

I grew up in an Italian-American neighborhood, and I heard some Italian words pronounced much the way they are pronounced in the Sopranos television show. gabbagool=cappacola, compare=goomba, comare=goomar, esto cozzo=stugots. Theres a method to this: c->g, p->b, drop the last syllable. Would this be a page to explain this more fully? I can't do it, I only have anecdotal knowledge. 69.143.57.91 21:47, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

As a native, and a Sicilian (my grandpa worked in the States) I can tell you that what you hear in your place is a local variety, usualy tinged with old Sicilian and Neapolitan dialect. Cumpa' is Neapolitan, comare is dialect or old Italian. Most of the first Italian migrants only spoke dialect. Then, operatic Italian is 19th-century. People who still speak Sicilian in the States often use for example, words that no longer exist on the Island. --Wikipedius 02:49, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

What? Do you mean that the Sopranos speak italian? They speak "Mafioso Siciliano", not Italian! I never heard an Italian pronounce a word as you stated... NEVER! Italian is a beautiful language, not a pastiche of Mafiosos slang. --- Michel Went

I would say it's "American/ Brooklyn Mafioso pre-20th century Siciliano/ Napoletano"- it's unfortunate most people in the US equate this vulgar slang as typical of Italians or Italian Americans. Most Italian immigrants to the US came in the first part of the 1900s from the rural regions of the south. The very regions they came from evolved (socially and linguistically), while time seemed to stand still for the immigrants. As the writer pointed out above, most could speak only their local dialect and this (and not standard italian) carried on for their life as Americans. This pastiche jargon, I would guess, developed with the second generation. As an Italian visiting the US, I was appalled by how many Americans of Italian descent embrace this pastiche jargon as their own. This has nothing to do with Italy or the italian language! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.183.217.31 (talk) 23:01, 25 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Rumenian closer to classical latin?

Can someone cite those references? --Philx 21:56, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The numbers of speakers

I don't understand this change. All languages are rounded... why italian is so careful? --Ilario 10:55, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Official language in Switzerland

There is a mistake. Italian is not official language in Ticino and Graubunden! It's an official language in the whole Switzerland. All official documents are written in three languages. Only Rumantsch is regional language. --Ilario 11:32, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Difficulty of Italian

I don't understand what is meant by the statement: "It's one of the most difficult language in Europe." Does anyone here remember what was being driven at? This is under the classification section, so perhaps we are talking about the difficulty of classifying unitary Italian as mostly Gallo-Romance. Anyway, as it reads, the statement seems confusing. --Ph7five 10:45, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think whoever wrote was implying anything about its classification. That statement seems out of place and I think the writer meant it's a difficult language to learn. M P M 18:21, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
the statement in my opinion is POV. All languages are difficult. Italian is difficult for a norwegian, but it's very simple for a spanish. Probably the most difficult language (in absolute sense) is chinese, and the european most difficult language is danish, but as usual, danish is very simple for a norwegian or a swedish. Basically, in absence of a some scientific or linguistic criterium i'm not aware of, the statement "most difficult language" is just relative of your previous linguistic background, therefore it is totally POV. --munehiro 18:20, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm an italian girl so for me italian is very very easy... but some people say that italian is difficult 'cause there are a lot of strange rule that must be know at memory. for example verbs... in italian there are different verbs as in latin... however also studyng english isn't very easy... -- Mara

[edit] What is thank you in Italian?

I THink that thank you in Italian is Denada!!! What do u think?


Don't be silly. This discussion shouldn't be here, but since I'm new to Wikipedia, I won't delete it (can I?), only correct it.
"De nada" (day nah-dah) is Spanish for "it's nothing" (loosely translated). Its equivelent in Italian is "niente" (nee-en-tay).
"Thank you" in Italian is "grazie," pronounced grah-tzee-ay.
(I fail in using the IPA, though I know it. Those pronunciations used above are vulgar phonetic.) - Shanti M.
"De nada" is equivalent to "di nulla" in Italian, which is just a polite way to reply to "grazie". The most standard reply is "Prego" or (more colloquial) "figurati" or (more polite) "si figuri".
i'm italian and in italian "denada" doesn't exist. Thank you/thanks is "grazie", Thank you so much "grazie mille". Denada isn't italian, is spanish.

[edit] diphthongs

From the article:

Diphthongs exist,(e.g. "uo", "iu", "ie", "ai"), but are limited to the pattern: (unstressed "u" or "i", or zero) + (stressed vowel) + (unstressed "u" or "i", or zero)

This pattern as expressed is confusing and could cover anything from a monophthong to a triphthong. I think it's clearer to change it to the following, which I'll do, but as I don't speak much Italian, please double-check it for accuracy.

Diphthongs exist, (e.g. "uo", "iu", "ie", "ai"), but are limited to an unstressed "u" or "i" before or after a stressed vowel.

Thanks, Arbitrary username 15:50, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Italian in South America, especially in Argentina

I don't think Italian is effectively spoken in Argentina. What we know as Italian (the standardized or literary Tuscan dialect of Firenze) was not widely spoken in the italian peninsula prior to the unification (1861), and did not effectively become the universal language of Italy until the 1960s. Italian immigrants to Argentina (and to the US, Uruguay, Brasil, Venezuela, Mexico and Chile) did not bring the Italian language with them but their own languages (improperly called "dialects", as they do not derivate from the Tuscan language). In Buenos Aires, the main language brought by immigrants was not Italian (i.e. Tuscan) but Sicilian and Calabrian which produced the Lunfardo. In Mendoza it was mostly Venetian (still spoken there today) in much the same way as it was in Southern Brasil (Rio Grande do Sul) where it is known as "taliano". First and second generation Italian immigrants to Argentina and Uruguay, for example, do not speak Italian, but mostly Calabrian, Sicilian and Napolitan. I think that by saying that Italian is spoken in South America, you are indirectly assuming that the diverse languages of Italy are all "dialects" of Italian. Actually, in fact, you do use the word "dialect" in this article to refer to the languages of Italy. I think this is absolutely wrong, linguistically incorrect. --Alonso 20:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree, Argentina should be removed from the list of countries where italian is spoken. Wesborland 00:51, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
I think you are only partially correct. There are two points I would like to make:
1. It is not fully supported that Sicilian, Calabrian and Venetian are not Italian dialects. Even if there were a consensu that they are not, they would be part of an Italo linguistic group and would be thus termed an "Italian" language (just as can Tuscan and Neopolitan).
2. Since there has been virtually no immigration to Argentina since prior to the 1950s, there is not much Italian spoken there anymore and this is a moot point. Even though many Argentinians are of Italian backgound (some estimates put it as high as 45%), second and third generation speakers are fully assimilated and generally do not speak Italian (or Italian dialects). Relatively few Argentinians of Italian background continue to speak Italian on a daily basis. This is even more true in other countries listed (Chile, Brazil). This is not to say that people cannot speak Italian, however, as it continues to be a common second language to learn. As a sidebar, many claim that Rioplatense Spanish specifically, is very Italianized (the intonation has strong Neopolitan influence).
In Canada and Australia, where the immigration has been more recent (up to the 1970s) and linguistic assimilation has been more difficult for the first generation (Spanish is similar, English is not), Italian and Italian dialects are still spoken within the home and community.
In the US immigration tapered off in the 1950s and virtually stopped by 1970. There are not many day-to-day speakers there either, except perhaps isolated ex-pat communities or among the older generations.
Perhaps the article should be updated to reflect these points rather than point to every country where there has been Italian immigration in the last 100 years. 66.183.217.31 18:06, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Italian music terminology

Hey, I've just created and will momentarily launch a WP:PR for Italian music terminology. I'd really like some native Italian speakers to comment, so please do so at Wikipedia:Peer review/Italian music terminology. Tuf-Kat 02:17, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Another "Closest to Latin" comment

To chime in on this debate, I am curious about the fact that Spanish was not brought up in this discussion. Indeed Spanish and Italian are so similar that they are often mutually intelligible (native speakers of each often argue that point because of cultural biases of course). It has long been observed that Spanish can be argued to be as similar (some say more so) to Latin as Italian (I have an old Latin grammar text that says as much). Indeed, one example of the "closeness" of Spanish compared to the other languages is the development of the letter V. This sound progressed from the "W" sound in Latin, to the mixed B-V sound in old Romance, to the germanic "V" sound in most Western European languages. What is notable is that the mixed B-V sound is still what is used in modern Spanish whereas all of the other Romance languages switched to the germanic "V" sound. In general one can easily find many examples of vocabulary, grammar, phonology, and "style" in general that can be used to argue in favor of either Italian or Spanish. To argue that Italian is signficantly more similar to Latin is at best a highly biased statement. French, by contrast, can easily be argued to be much less similar having been dramatically influenced by the old Frankish language and others. I do agree with the arguments regarding Romanian. The grammar of Romanian is generally much closer. The vocabulary and pronunciation, bear less resemblance to the ancient language.

Regarding the comments above in this discussion list that "Italian was the last Romance language to become a real spoken-language" I am not a language expert but, in a general sense, Italy went through the same turmoil that the rest of Europe did. The languages in Italy from which modern Italian descended were for a long time spoken by isolated groups which were heavily influenced by the various conquerors that came through the region. It is true that the Italians made some notable efforts (like other Europeans) to add back aspects of Classical Latin to their language but if you study the language it is still a great stretch to say it is close to Latin while the other Romance languages are distinct echoes of the language. Elements mentioned here like "freedom in disposing of words" are not at all unique to Italian.


I,personally, don't like anything POV or nationalist echoes in any article, so I agree with you that, I'm Italian however, somes tatements are, well, contestable, but also in your statements i can, at least, percieve some bias .
  • You said that Romanian grammar resembels C. Latin ones more, but, let me say a thing, a part form the declension, the entire verbal and syntactical sytem evolved from that fo Latin, for examples gerunds an participles does not even resembles the function of the the latin corrispectives, there is complete absence of absolute verbal forms, scilicet ablative absolute et cetera, in some cases romanian behaves like a slavic language, when in fact latin or other else romance language use as a subordinate a infinitive, romanian uses a subjunctive.
  • It is true that not only italian has a flexible word order system.
  • Many lingusits reports it as one ofthe closer if not the closest,like G. Segre, Bruno migliorini and others, so those aren't unsourced affirmation.

--Philx 06:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


Where is Rome? In Italy... Where was first spoken Latin? In Rome... Then Italian is the closest language and the DIRECT descendant of the Latin language. Just be logic! Why should Romanian, Spanish or French be closer to Latin than Italian? -- Ernto Jill
It is being argued about the closeness to Classical Latin which was not anything else than an absolute stylized written form. It is not what speakers used in every day use in the Roman Empire, neither in what is now France, Romania, Spain, nor Italy though their language were highly and mosly influenced by it. We assume here that in every region the language began to lose closeness to Latin as the language were influenced by local languages and experienced natural sound and grammar changes. The closest would be the language that would have concerved characteristics from Latin; geographical origin does not matter.
i'm italian and here in italy I study at liceo scientifico, so also latin (in italian "latino"). so... i must translate a lot of latin passages. at school i study also english... so i can say that italian is the closest language. some english words are like latin words... but there are less than italian words.


Well, i am spanish and actually I study italian, in fact, I studied Latin (just for one year) and honestly both languages are amazingly similar. This is not a scientific fact, just a personal experience, but from my point of view is it easier to understanD italian than portughese, at least if you are spanish, of course. And talking about the closest to Latin, as far as I am concerned each language (spanish and italian) has some expresions and grammatical forms that come directly from Latin. I´m dont know wich one is closest to latin (it looks like this is a kind of "contest" or an "battle of honour" but I guess thats quite egocentric think what an italian o spanish could say about his own language, it would be better to hear what an english or french that has studied latin could say about wich one is closer to Latin. (sorry if my english is not as good as you would like to, Im doing my best)

[edit] Geographic Distribution

The article reads 'In Canada there are large Italian-speaking communities in Montreal (100,000) and Toronto (70,000). Yet, in the Montreal article the Italian population in Montreal is listed as 224,460 and the Toronto articles says the Italian population in Toronto is 429,380.

[edit] Flag of the Italian language?

I have never seen or heard about this "Unofficial Flag of Italian language". In fact, since when do languages have flags? Can anybody explain it? 82.53.177.223 15:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Removed for now. 82.53.177.223 16:06, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
i'm italian and i have never seen or heard "la bandiera non ufficiale della lingua italiana"! -- Mara

[edit] segni d’abbreviazione

Can anyone explain to me what these are? --Daniel C. Boyer 18:32, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

'Signs of abbreviations'Cameron Nedland 00:12, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spoken Italian Language Differences Between the 15th Century and Today?

Is there an English-Italian website that shows/discusses the differences between 15th Century Italian (as it was spoken in Florence and Milan) and modern Italian?

I'm starting to write a novel, and I need some guidance, as I don't want to make the mistake of just plugging in some modern Italian words. More to the point, the story involves Leonardo da Vinci, or a character very much like him, which is why I want to focus on Florence, Milan, and Tuscany in general. Stephana 16:14, 1 November 2006 (UTC)


I don't think there is any website like that. I advise you to read "Il Principe", by Niccolò Machiavelli: it is a short treatise written in 1513. You'll get a general idea abaut syntax and vocabulary commonly used in that period. You can find it for free on wikisource: [2]. --Stefano 16:16, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Latino-Faliscan

Should Latino-Faliscan be added underneath italic in the language family section in the top right hand corner?

Fingon

[edit] add or remove "I love you" translation in italian

I love you is "ti voglio bene" when sons say it parents, "ti amo" when "Romeo" says it "Giulietta"... it can be "dangerous", for misunderstanding ;) ...

[edit] ɱ

Is this a true phoneme or a allophone?Cameron Nedland 15:00, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Seems like it's an allophone of /n/. The consonant clusters <nf> and <nv> are always pronounced [ɱf] and [ɱv]. --74.104.224.144 18:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Use of acute, grave, and circumflex accents / diacritics?

From the current state of this entry, it would appear that Italian uses only: grave accent to indicate stress over any standard vowel (AEIOU), and acute accent to indicate open/closed-ness over E. However, quite a number of sources seem to suggest otherwise:

  • ILoveLanguages says acute/grave is also used for open/closed on O.
  • SmartPhrase thinks acute or grave can be used over any vowel, and that cirucmflex appears in poetry.
  • UniLang appears to agree with ILoveLanguages that only E and O have the open/closed distinction, and says that the accent on A must always be grave, but claims that it's OK to use acute on I and U.
  • Locuta Centro Studi Italiani mentions the circumflex in poetry, and seems to suggest that the open/closed distinction could be used on any vowel. They have example words where they definitely show the acute over O, and on this page I see the word "Núoro" (the name of a city?) which shows acute over U.
  • ASK Translation shows grave over anything, acute over EIOU (but not A), and circumflex over I.

In any case, I'm now quite uncertain what the correct set would be. The World's Major Languages, ed. Comrie, provides info on accents on p. 284, and agrees with the current state of the entry -- grave over anything, acute over E. Is this a matter of taste? Commentary from native speakers would be helpful.

Thanks. Auros 01:00, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

First of all, in Italian E and O have the open/closed distinction while other vowels have not. So E and O can have both acute and grave accents, while others vowel can have just one sort of accent. Which of the two should be used is still a matter of debate among scholars, however the majority of them (Migliorini, Sensini, Camilli, Migliorini, Fiorelli, Serianni) agree that the grave should be used, and almost everyone in everyday usage follow this trend given also that the Italian keyboard has just grave A, I and U. That acute Núoro is just not correct.
Secondly, accents are used when the stress is over the final syllable, so theoretically grave accent is used over AEIOU and acute accent over E and O. However, there is no single word which ends with an open O, except for the word that means letter "O" proper, so practically speaking acute accent is used just over E. Sometimes accents are used even when the stress is not on the final syllable to avoid an ambiguity between two homograph words which have the stress on the same syllable but are stressed in a different way (e.g. lègge which means he reads and légge which means law), or have the stress on different syllables (e.g. princìpi which means principles and prìncipi which means princes), so the acute accent could appear over an open O, but this is getting rarer and rarer.
The circumflex was used in poetry several centuries ago when making an elision because of prosody's rules, as in modern French. However, until the 60's it was used over I to point out a long sound and so avoiding the repeat of a double vowel when making plural of words ending with a non stressed -io (e.g. serio → serî rather than serii). However nowadays is no more compulsory and largely antiquated (plurals are made simply dropping the final -o). Hope this helps. --Fertuno 21:13, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, the whole list of the accented vowels that can be used in Italian is: À É È Í/Ì Î Ó Ò Ú/Ù. However, Í and Ú are just variants of Ì and Ù (because someone thinks they are more correct since I and U are always closed, as É and Ó), while Ó and Î aren't compulsory to write correctly in Italian, so they are rarely used. Lupo Azzurro 20:42, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks to both of you. Do you think it's worth trying to integrate some of this discussion either here, or in the either the Italian alphabet or Italian spelling article? There seems to be some hinting at these details here, but not a complete explanation. And there's basically no mention at all, under the alphabet/spelling articles. Auros 21:33, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

If you want to add it, I've written a short explanation, but it should be checked because my English is far from being perfect. ;)

The acute accent is used on the stressed vowels E and O when they are closed. Since final O’s are never closed in the end of a word (the only case where the accent sign is compulsory), Ó is rarely encountered in written Italian. Moreover the acute accent is considered by someone the most correct to be used on the letters I and U, since they are always closed, as É and Ó. However since they have one possible reading and since Í and Ú aren’t present in the standard Italian keyboard, the grave accent is employed in this case by the major part of Italian speakers.
The grave accent is used on the stressed vowels E and O when they are open. As said above, all the vowels but E employ just the grave accent in the major part of the texts.
The circumflex accent can be used to mark the contraction of two vowels, especially two i’s. For example, it can be used to differentiate words like geni (plural of "gene", genes) and genî (plural of "genio", geniuses). It is rarely used anyway (both the words above are normaly spelled geni), and its usage is seen archaic. Lupo Azzurro 19:54, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Native 40 million?!?!?!?

What the hell! Is it Vandalism? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.20.244.69 (talk) 01:00, 28 February 2007 (UTC).



70.106.207.204 11:55, 6 March 2007 (UTC)this effin sux big70.106.207.204 11:55, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

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