WEBVTT

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

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And do you know
how they're pronounced?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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you could consider subscribing to my
Podcast Italiano Club.

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

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learning or who love the Italian language.

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So: the vowels in standard Italian.

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But... what is standard Italian?

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

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

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

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

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

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the vowels correspond substantially
to those of standard Italian.

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

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

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

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One closed sound, and one open.

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é /e/, è /ɛ/, ó /o/, ò /ɔ/.

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

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Italian vowel diagram,
that is, basically, a chart

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

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

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

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/i/, /a/