Итальянская орфография: правила и особенности

Orthography of the Italian language

Italian orthography (the conventions used in writing Italian) uses 21 letters of the 26 letter Latin alphabet to write the Italian language. This article focuses on the writing of Standard Italian, based historically on the Florentine dialect, and not the other Italian dialects. Written Italian is very regular and almost completely phonemic – having an almost one to one correspondence between letters (or sequences of letters) and sounds (or sequences of sounds). The main exceptions are that stress placement and vowel quality (for and ) are not notated, and may be voiced or not, and may represent vowels or semivowels, and a silent is used in a very few cases other than the digraphs and (used for the hard and sounds before and ).

The Italian alphabet has five vowel letters, Of those, only represents one sound value, while all others have two. In addition, and indicate a different pronunciation of a preceding or (see below). In stressed syllables, represents both open and close Similarly, represents both open and close (see Italian phonology for further details on those sounds). There is typically no orthographic distinction between the open and close sounds represented, though accent marks are used in certain instances (see below). There are some minimal pairs, called heteronyms, where the same spelling is used for distinct words with distinct vowel sounds. In unstressed syllables, only the close variants occur. In addition to representing the vowels and , and also typically represent the semivowels and , when unstressed and occurring before another vowel. Many exceptions exist (e. g. , , , , , , , , , , , ). An may indicate that a preceding or is "soft" .

Normally is represented by , but it is represented by in some words, such as , , , , and These words all contain a sequence derived from an original which was subsequently diphthongised. The sequence is always spelled (e. g. ), with exceptions being spelled in the words , its derivation , and and , two alternative forms of or .

In addition to being used to indicate a hard or before front vowels (see above), is used to distinguish , , , (present indicative of , "to have") from ("or"), ("to the", m. pl. ), ("to"), ("year"); since is always silent, there is no difference in the pronunciation of such words. The letter is also used in some interjections, where it always comes immediately after the first vowel in the word (e. g. , , , ). In filler words and both ⟨h⟩ and the preceding vowel are silent. ⟨h⟩ is used in some loanwords, by far the most common of which is , but also handicap, habitat, hardware, hall "lobby, foyer", hamburger, horror, hobby. Silent is also found in some Italian toponyms: Chorio, Dho, Hano, Mathi, Noha, Proh, Rho, Roghudi, Santhià, Tharros, Thiene, Thiesi, Thurio, Vho; and surnames: Dahò, Dehò, De Bartholomaeis, De Thomasis, Matthey, Rahò, Rhodio, Tha, Thei, Theodoli, Thieghi, Thiella, Thiglia, Tholosano, Thomatis, Thorel, Thovez.

The letter (I lunga "long I" or gei) is not considered part of the standard Italian alphabet; however, it is used in some Latin words, in proper nouns (such as Jesi, Letojanni, Juventus, etc. ), in words borrowed from foreign languages (most common: jeans, but also jazz, jet, jeep, banjo), and in an archaic spelling of Italian. Until the 19th century, was used in Italian instead of in word initial rising diphthongs, as a replacement for final , and between vowels (as in [[Savoia (disambiguation)); this rule was quite strict in official writing. The letter represents in Latin and Italian and dialect words such as Romanesco dialect ajo ("garlic"; cf. Italian aglio ); it represents in borrowings from English (including judo, borrowed from Japanese via English); and in borrowings from French (julienne, bijou). The letters (cappa), (V doppia or doppia V, "double V"), (ics) and (ipsilon or I greca "Greek I") are not part of the standard Italian alphabet and are used only in unassimilated or partially assimilated loanwords. The letter is used in karma, kayak, kiwi, kamikaze, etc. ; it is always pronounced It is often used informally among young people as a replacement for , paralleling the use of in English (for example, ke instead of che). The letter is used in web, whisky, water "water closet / toilet", western "Western movie", watt, etc; it is alternately pronounced (in web, whisky, western) or (in water, watt). A capital is used as an abbreviation of viva or evviva ("long live"). Although is named V doppia or doppia V, in initialisms such as B. M. W., T. W. A., W. W. F., W. C., www it is normally read simply as vu. The letter represents either , as in extra, uxorio, xilofono, or when it is preceded by and followed by a vowel, e. g. exoterico. In most words, it may be replaced with or (with different pronunciation: xilofono/silofono, taxi/tassì) or, rarely, by (with the same pronunciation: claxon/clacson). In some other languages of Italy, it represents (Venetian), (Sicilian), or (Sardinian and Ligurian). The letter is used in yoga, yogurt, yacht, Uruguay, etc. This letter is sometimes replaced by in some words like yoga/ioga and yogurt/iogurt, but the spellings with are much more common.

The acute accent (´) may be used on and to represent stressed close mid vowels. This use of accents is generally mandatory only to indicate stress on a word final vowel; elsewhere, accents are generally found only in dictionaries. Since final is hardly ever close mid, is very rarely encountered in written Italian (e. g. "subway", from the original French pronunciation of with a final stressed ). The grave accent (`) is found on , , , , It may be used on and when they represent open mid vowels. The accents may also be used to differentiate minimal pairs within Italian (for example "peach" vs. "fishing"), but in practice this is limited to didactic texts. In the case of final and , both diacritics are encountered. By far the most common option is the grave accent, and , though this may be due to the rarity of the acute accent to represent stress; the alternative of employing the acute, and , is in practice limited to erudite texts, but can be justified as both vowels are high (as in Catalan). However, since there are no corresponding low (or lax) vowels to contrast with in Italian, both choices are equally acceptable. The circumflex accent (ˆ) can be used to mark the contraction of two unstressed vowels /ii/ ending a word, normally pronounced [i], so that the plural of "study, office" may be written , or The form with circumflex is found mainly in older texts, though it may still appear in contexts where ambiguity might arise from homography. For example, it can be used to differentiate words like ("genes", plural of ) and ("geniuses", plural of ) or ("princes", plural of ) and ("principles", plural of ). In general, current usage usually prefers a single instead of a double or an with circumflex. Monosyllabic words generally lack an accent (e. g. , ). The accent is written, however, if there is an or a preceding another vowel (, ). This applies even if the is "silent", i. e. part of the digraphs or representing /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ (, ). It does not apply, however, if the word begins with (, ). Many monosyllabic words are spelled with an accent in order to avoid ambiguity with other words (e. g. , versus , ). This is known as accento distintivo and also occurs in other Romance languages (e. g. the Spanish tilde diacrítica).