Do you know how many vowels
there are in standard Italian?

And do you know
how they're pronounced?

This week's video was supposed to
be a different one, i.e., the pronunciation

of the Italian in Milan. A video
that I then decided not to publish

because I realized that in order to
speak about how in Milan

some sounds, some vowels—especially—are pronounced,
I first had to explain how they're pronounced

in standard Italian, and so
I was wasting a lot of time.

And I thought: maybe it's better to first
make a video on the vowels in standard Italian.

And that's what I will do today. This video,
by the way, is a sort of summary,

a concentration of a lesson that I held
on my Podcast Italiano Club,

a two-hour, interactive lesson
on the vowels in Italian.

If that lesson interests you, and also
future lessons on pronunciation in Italian,

you could consider subscribing to my
Podcast Italiano Club.

Oh, I forgot! I'm Davide, this is Podcast Italiano.
A channel for those who are

learning or who love the Italian language.

So: the vowels in standard Italian.

But... what is standard Italian?

I spoke about it in this video,
which I recommend that you see.

To summarize, standard Italian is an
ideal model of pronunciation,

which no Italian has from birth
and which you need to learn.

Having said that, with regards to vowels,
we can look to the Italians

from central Italy. Because in regions like
Tuscany, Lazio, Umbria and Marche

the vowels correspond substantially
to those of standard Italian.

And how many vowels are there? Because
we have five letters, which are

A, E, I, O, U, but we have, actually,
seven sounds, seven phonemes.

Because we have two sounds for the E
and two sounds for the O.

One closed sound, and one open.

é /e/, è /ɛ/, ó /o/, ò /ɔ/.

But, in my opinion it makes sense to start with
this immagine, which is the so-called

Italian vowel diagram,
that is, basically, a chart

which would be a representation of the mouth
seen from the side. The dots that you see indicate the

seven qualities of vowels, the location of the dots
indicates the location that the tongue takes

in the mouth to produce the sounds,
specifically the highest point of the tongue.

/i/, /a/