Italian Language Orthography Quiz

Orthography of the Italian Language

• Italian orthography is based on the 26-letter Latin alphabet and uses 21 letters to write the language.
• Standard Italian is based on the Florentine dialect.
• The Italian language is almost completely phonemic.
• Stress placement and vowel quality are not notated.
• Silent ⟨h⟩ is used in very few cases other than the digraphs ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨gh⟩.
• The base alphabet consists of 21 letters: five vowels (A, E, I, O, U) and 16 consonants.
• Double consonants represent true geminates.
• The Italian alphabet has five vowel letters, ⟨a e i o u⟩, of which only ⟨a⟩ represents one sound value.
• ⟨e⟩ and ⟨i⟩ indicate a different pronunciation of a preceding ⟨c⟩ or ⟨g⟩.
• The letters ⟨c⟩ and ⟨g⟩ represent the plosives /k/ and /ɡ/ before ⟨r⟩ and before the vowels ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩.
• The digraphs ⟨ci⟩ and ⟨gi⟩ indicate "soft" (affricate) /tʃ/ or /dʒ/ before another vowel.
• ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩ may be voiced or not; ⟨ss⟩ always represents voiceless /ss/ and ⟨zz⟩ may represent either a voiceless alveolar affricate /tts/ or its voiced counterpart /ddz/.Italian Language: Pronunciation, Silent Letters, Diacritics, and Loanwords

Pronunciation:

• Italian pronunciation is phonetic, meaning that words are pronounced as they are written.
• Italian language has 20 consonants and 7 vowels, and each letter has a specific sound.
• There are two sounds for the letters "c" and "g" depending on the letters that come after them.
• The letters "h", "j", "k", "w", "x", and "y" are not part of the standard Italian alphabet but are used in loanwords.
• There are a few words that have different pronunciation in voiced and voiceless forms, while others have different meanings depending on whether they are pronounced in voiced or voiceless form.
• The verbal ending "-izzare" from Greek "-ίζειν" is always pronounced "ddz".

Silent letters:

• The letter "h" is always silent in Italian. However, it is used to distinguish some words from each other.
• Silent "h" is also found in some Italian toponyms and surnames.
• The letters "k", "w", "x", and "y" are not part of the standard Italian alphabet but are used in loanwords.

Loanwords:

• Loanwords are words borrowed from other languages, and Italian has many loanwords from Latin, Greek, and other languages.
• Loanwords in Italian are always pronounced according to Italian phonetics.
• Loanwords in Italian include words from English, French, German, and other languages.

Diacritics:

• Diacritics are marks added to letters to indicate a change in pronunciation or to distinguish between words that are spelled the same.
• The acute accent is used to represent close-mid vowels when they are stressed in a position other than the default second-to-last syllable.
• The grave accent is found on vowels and may be used to differentiate minimal pairs within Italian.
• The circumflex accent can be used to mark the contraction of two unstressed vowels /ii/ ending a word.

Sample text:

• The sample text is from Dante Alighieri's "Divina Commedia," and it is highly influential poetry in Italian literature.