1. Italian belongs to the group of Romance languages.

Italian is an Indo-European language that belongs to the group of Romance languages, also called Neo-Latin
languages due to their common origin from Vulgar Latin. Today the six most widely spoken Romance languages are,
in decreasing order, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan. Among these, Spanish is usually
considered the most understandable for Italian people.

2. Italian is spoken by over 80 million people.

Italian is spoken as a mother tongue by approximately 65 million people in the EU (mainly in Italy), and as a second
language by about 14 million people. Including the Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as
Switzerland and Albania) and in other continents, the total number of speakers is more than 85 million.

3. Italian is written in the Latin alphabet.

The Italian alphabet derives from the writing system used in ancient Rome, with minor changes concerning, for
instance, the introduction of some missing characters.

4. Italian has articles.

Similarly to English, Italian uses both definite and indefinite articles.

5. Italian doesnt have cases.

Italian is a highly inflected language, but it did not preserve the case system of Latin. Some of the functions which in
Latin were performed by cases are expressed in Italian by means of prepositions, just like in English.

6. Italian has two genders.

The Italian gender system is quite simple, as it consists of two categories: masculine and feminine. Dealing with
Italian nouns (or pronouns, or adjectives), however, is made a little trickier by the fact that word endings convey
information about both gender and number at the same time.

7. In Italian there are more than 3 different tenses.

The Italian language has plenty of tenses! Grammars list four simple tenses and four compound tenses in the
indicative mood. Simple tenses are verb forms that consist of one word only; these are the present tense (presente),
the imperfect tense (imperfetto), the remote past tense (passato remoto), and the future tense (futuro semplice). In
addition, there are four compound tenses (tempi composti), which are verb forms consisting of two words. Both the
verbs essere to be and avere to have act as helping verbs in compound tense formations, which are the present
perfect (passato prossimo), the future perfect (futuro anteriore), the pluperfect (trapassato prossimo), and the past
anterior (trapassato remoto).

8. In Italian the sentence word order is similar to English.

In Italian sentences the basic word order is SVO (Subject Verb Object), but you can scramble words for expressive
aims (i.e. to emphasise one word or another in a sentence) and, differently from English, you can drop the subject
when the context is clear enough.

9. In Italian the accent falls generally on the penultimate syllable.

In Italian the stress tends to falls on the penultimate (second-to-last) syllable, but some attention is in any case
required, especially when dealing with words written in the same way (e.g. ancra again vs. ncora anchor), or
when conjugating verbs (e.g. prlo I speak, but prlano they speak).

10. In Italy dialects are very different from one another.

In Italy there are many and diverse regional dialects; several, like Sardinian and Friulan, are considered as distinct
languages in their own right. While dialects used in central regions (Tuscany in particular) are deemed to be more
akin to standard Italian, dialects spoken in northern regions differ markedly from those spoken in southern Italy. In
some cases mutual understanding and communication between people speaking different dialects can be rather
difficult.




2. Alphabet
A, a [a]
B, b [bi]
C, c [ci]
D, d [di]
E, e [e]
F, f [effe]
G, g [gi]
H, h [acca]
I, i [i]
L, l [elle]
M, m [emme]
N, n [enne]
O, o [o]
P, p [pi]
Q, q [qu]
R, r [erre]
S, s [esse]
T,t [ti]
U, u [u]
V, v [vu]
Z, z [zeta]


Vowels

Italian vowels are always articulated in a sharp, clear way, regardless of stress. In standard Italian a, i, u, are always
pronounced the same way:
mano
dito
su

On the other hand, e and o in stressed syllables may represent either an open (, ) or a closed (, ) sound:
resto rete
rosa Roma

As a result, the vowel system displays seven different sounds: three front vowels (, , i), three back vowels (, , u),
and one central vowel (a).

Front Vowels


t tea


perch why, because

i
vino wine
Back Vowels


per but, on the contrary


sole sun

u
luna 'moon'

Central Vowel

a
mare sea



Please note that writing the accent is mandatory only on the last syllable, and just on some monosyllables, mostly
with the function of disambiguating words pronounced in the same way but having different meanings:
t tea te you
l there la the

Consonants

Italian consonants may be either short or long. Long sounds occur only in word-internal position, and are written with
double letters.

b banana rubare sabbia
c cane muco mucca; cena pace accendere
d domani dado addio
f fico gufo ufficio
g gatto legare leggo; giro agire raggi
l luna pala palla
m mela remo mamma
n nove nono nonno
p pera sapere tappo
q quando acqua
r rosa caro carro
s sera casa rosso
t tempo note notte
v vino nuovo ovvio
z zero azzurro

3. THE ITALIAN SOUNDS
Please note that the letter q is only found in combination with the vowel u; qu sounds like cu, and in word-internal
position it is normally doubled like this: cqu.

The letter h is never pronounced, but it is used to distinguish similar words (e.g. a to vs. ha he/she has; anno year
vs. hannothey have), and to represent different sounds for the letters c and g.

C and g always sound hard before back and central vowels (co, go; cu, gu; ca, ga), and soft before front vowels
(ce, ci and ge, gi), unless they are followed by the letter h (che, ghe and chi, ghi): in this case they are pronounced
hard.


SOUNDS soft soft hard hard
Front Vowels ce, ge ci, gi che, ghe chi, ghi
Back Vowels cio, gio ciu, giu co, go cu, gu
Central Vowel cia, gia ca, ga

cera amici amiche fichi
gelato giro streghe maghi
ci ciurma cosa curiosit
giostra gi gola gufo
ciabatta casa
giallo gallo

The letters s and z may correspond to either voiced or voiceless sounds, often according to the context. Followed by
voiced consonants (i.e. b, d, g, m, n, v, l, r), or between vowels, the letter s represents a voiced sound:
sbaglio rosa

whereas at the beginning/end of words, or followed by voiceless consonants (i.e. p, t, c/q, f) it is voiceless:
sera lapis scuola


The letter z tends to be voiced when beginning words and voiceless in internal position, but it may sound either way
(no rules!) when long:
zero zucca zucchero
stazione, calze
pazzo pizza pezzo (voiceless) but azzurro mezzo (voiced)

Special attention must be paid to the following combinations:

sci/sce pronounced soft like in
scienza pesce
(contrary to pronounced hard sc in all the other combinations:
scatola sconto scuro schiena)

gli mostly pronounced soft like in
gli gigli figlio

gn always pronounced soft:
cagna cagne ragni ragno gnu


4. BASIC ITALIAN GRAMMAR

Nouns and articles

The Italian noun has two genders, feminine and masculine, and two numbers, singular and plural. Italian nouns are
generally preceded by the article, which can be definite or indefinite.

You will learn more about nouns and articles in the course, but for now just have a look at these nouns that you will
meet in the first unit. Read and try to memorise them:

l'amico the friend (male)
l'aeroporto the airport
la casa the house
il giornale the newspaper
il libro the book
il letto the bed
la macchina the car
la penna the pen
la stazione the station
lo studente the student


Verbs

Verbs to be (essere) and to have (avere) are useful to introduce someone. You will learn their conjugation during the
course, but fo now just look at these examples:

Ciao, io sono Paolo e lei Anna. Tu chi sei?
Hi, Im Paolo and she is Anna. Who are you?
Noi siamo italiani, e voi?
We are Italian, and you?

Io ho 20 anni. Quanti anni hai?
Im 20 years old. How old are you?
Io ho un amico italiano.
Ive got an Italian friend.

Italian verbs are traditionally divided into three conjugations according to the ending of the infinitive form, namely -are,
-ere, -ire. Some Italian verbs are irregular, so they follow their own conjugation. You will learn this in detail, but for
now just have a look at these basic sentences in the present tense:

Anna e Alex arrivano in Italia Anna and Alex arrive in Italy
Lorenzo aspetta Anna e Alex Lorenzo waits for Anna and Alex
Anna scrive le parole nuove Anna writes down the new words