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/