English Pronunciation for Italian Speakers

"I'm-a going." "I 'ave a question." Walk said with an l. If Italian is your first language, you have probably heard at least one of these, and if you teach English in Milan, Rome or Naples, you hear all three every week.

None of them is random. Each one is a rule of Italian pronunciation applied to an English word, so each one has a fix. Many come from two facts. Italian spelling is close to how Italian is pronounced, so Italian readers trust the letters; English spelling often does not match the sound. And Italian has seven vowels, no schwa, and no pairs of words told apart by vowel length. English has more vowels, a schwa in almost every sentence, and pairs such as ship and sheep.

This guide takes the difficult areas one at a time: what English does, what Italian does instead, and what to practise. Alison Duguid, who wrote the chapter on Italian speakers in Swan and Smith's Learner English, stresses how regional Italy is, and the guide notes where a regional accent changes the picture. The facts about Italian come from standard descriptions of its sound system, and the substitutions are documented ones (see Sources at the end). Teachers will find a section on what to drill first near the end.

This guide is also available in Italian as Pronuncia inglese per italiani: gli errori tipici, and the English to IPA converter has an Italian edition with its own Italian-language pages.

About the transcriptions. Every table gives a US and a UK form from a pronunciation lexicon IPAtics maintains, printed exactly as it appears there. The US column puts a stress mark before the stressed syllable even in one-syllable words (ship is /ˈʃɪp/) and marks no vowel length. The UK column marks length with ː and often leaves stress out. Both write the English r as /ɹ/.

Seven Italian vowels, more English ones

Italian has seven vowels: /i/, /e/, /ɛ/, /a/, /ɔ/, /o/ and /u/. Vowel length does not separate words in Italian (consonant length does, as in fato and fatto), and several English vowels fall between two Italian ones. The ear files each English vowel under the nearest Italian one, and pairs merge.

ship and sheep, full and fool

Italian /i/ is close to the vowel of sheep, so ship drifts toward it. For /ɪ/, relax the tongue and drop it slightly, halfway from Italian i toward Italian e, and keep it short. For /ʊ/, do the same from Italian u toward o: shorter, looser, lips only lightly rounded.

cat, cut and cart

Italian a covers three English vowels. In British English cat, cut and cart all differ, and American English keeps them apart too, with the r doing part of the work in cart. A second trap sits next to it: bad and bed can merge as well.

For /æ/, start from the open Italian e of bello, keep the tongue forward and drop the jaw further. For /ʌ/, say a short, relaxed a with the jaw only half open. For /ɑː/, open wide and pull the tongue back. Our list of English minimal pairs every learner confuses has more pairs for each contrast.

no and go: a vowel that moves

Italian o is a pure vowel: the tongue and lips hold still from start to finish. The English vowel of no, home and don't moves. In American English it starts near Italian o and glides toward /ʊ/; the British /əʊ/ starts in the middle of the mouth, nearer the schwa. Said with a plain Italian o, these words sound clipped.

Say the Italian o, then let the lips close in a little as the sound ends: o-u. The page for this vowel has audio.

The schwa: not every letter is a vowel

Italian gives every written vowel its full value, stressed or not. English weakens most unstressed vowels to the schwa /ə/, whatever letter spells them. Read with Italian habits, lemon comes out with a full o and sugar with a full a:

The schwa is the most common vowel in English, and it is short and quiet. Let the jaw and tongue rest, and say it quickly. Banana shows the pattern: one strong syllable, /ˈnæ/ or /nɑː/, between two weak ones. Our guide to the English schwa covers it in detail, and the page for /ə/ has audio.

Silent letters and -ed

The same trust in spelling makes Italian readers pronounce letters that English leaves silent:

The past tense ending -ed is the most frequent case. Except after /t/ and /d/, it is a single /t/ or /d/, not an extra syllable, so boiled has one syllable, not two:

The extra syllable appears only after /t/ and /d/, as in needed. When you learn a new word, look up its transcription instead of trusting the letters.

The final vowel: big-a, dog-a

Almost every native Italian word ends in a vowel. English words often end in a consonant, and Italian speakers tend to release that consonant with a short vowel after it, especially in words said on their own: big becomes "big-a", dog "dog-a". Teachers of Italian speakers list it among the most typical errors (see Sources).

Two techniques help. First, end the word on the closure: close the lips for /p/ and /b/, press the back of the tongue up for /k/ and /ɡ/, or the tip for /d/, and stop there, without letting a vowel out. Second, link: when the next word starts with a vowel, move the consonant onto it. Big apple becomes "bi-gapple", and the consonant starts a syllable, as it would in Italian.

h: present in the spelling, missing in the mouth

Italian writes h in ho, hanno and hotel and pronounces none of them. With no /h/ in their own language, many Italian speakers drop the English one. Some also add one where it does not belong, often between two vowels, as in go away said with an h before away. Dropping it turns some words into others:

English /h/ is breath through an open mouth, already shaped for the next vowel. Whisper "ha" as if you were fogging a mirror, and hold a hand in front of your mouth: you should feel warm air on heat and almost none on eat.

Speakers from Florence and much of Tuscany have an advantage. In the gorgia toscana, a c between vowels is softened to a breathy sound close to [h], as in la casa. That breath is the English /h/. The page on the /h/ sound has more words to practise with.

th: t and d

Italian has no th sounds, and the usual substitutes are /t/ and /d/, sometimes /f/ for the voiceless one. Italian t and d are already made with the tongue against the teeth, which makes there and dare especially easy to merge.

Start from the Italian t, then push the tongue tip a little further forward, between the teeth, and blow instead of stopping: that is /θ/. Add the voice for /ð/. The difference from t is that the air never stops. Our guide to the two th sounds has more pairs.

Consonant details: ng, s and the puff of air

sing, not sing-g

Italian has the sound [ŋ] only before a /k/ or /ɡ/ sound, as in fango and banca, so it always comes with a /ɡ/ or /k/ after it. English /ŋ/ often stands alone, and an Italian sing tends to end in an extra /ɡ/.

Hold the ng like a hum, with the back of the tongue against the soft palate, and let the sound fade without dropping the tongue suddenly. The page for /ŋ/ has audio.

small, not zmall

In Italian, s before a voiced consonant is always [z]: sbaglio, smettere. English keeps it /s/, so small should not start with a buzz.

Put two fingers on your throat and start with a long hiss: "sssss-mall". Nothing should vibrate until the m.

p, t, k and the puff of air

At the start of a stressed syllable, English /p/, /t/ and /k/ are followed by a small puff of air. Italian ones are not, and without the puff an English listener can hear pin as bin.

Hold a sheet of paper in front of your mouth and say pin: the paper should move. On bin it should stay still.

Word stress and rhythm

Italian has word stress, as English does, but the cognates that look familiar often carry it on a different syllable:

The UK entries leave stress unmarked, but all eight English words are stressed on the first syllable in both accents. The rest of each word weakens, and chocolate and vegetable lose a whole syllable that the spelling keeps.

Sentences work the same way. In I want to go to the cinema, the content words carry the beat and to and the shrink to a quick schwa. Giving every syllable a full vowel, as Italian does, hides which words carry the meaning, even when every sound is right.

The r

Italian r is a tongue-tip trill or tap. English r is an approximant: the tongue tip rises toward the roof of the mouth without touching it. To find it, say a long "eeeee" and slowly curl the tip up and back without contact. In standard British English, r is also silent unless a vowel follows: car is /kɑː/, and father ends in a plain schwa, /fɑːðə/. American English pronounces it: /ˈkɑɹ/, /ˈfɑðɚ/. Our comparison of American and British IPA lists the other differences. The page for the English r has audio.

For teachers: what to drill first

1. The vowels: ship and sheep, then cat, cut and cart. Start with listening: students who cannot hear the difference cannot practise it.
2. The schwa and stress, together. Mark the stressed syllable of every new word and say the rest weak. This also fixes the spelling pronunciations, because students stop reading every written vowel.
3. Final consonants without the added vowel, with linking.
4. h, correcting an added h as consistently as a dropped one.
5. th, ng and the puff of air as they come up.

Duguid's chapter is a reminder that a class from the same country is not one accent: a student from Florence and a student from Bari bring different starting points. Pair work with minimal pairs turns each item into a listening game: one student says a word, the other points to it.

A four-week plan

1. Week 1: the vowels. The ship table first, then cat, cut and cart, then let no and home move.
2. Week 2: the schwa and stress. Twenty words you use every day: find the stressed syllable and weaken the rest.
3. Week 3: endings. Final consonants with no added vowel, and -ed as one syllable.
4. Week 4: h and th. A hand in front of the mouth for /h/, the tongue between the teeth for /θ/ and /ð/.

Record yourself each week and listen back. You cannot hear your own accent while you speak, but you can hear it on a recording. Our guide to shadowing turns that into a daily routine.

Trying it yourself

Because English spelling is the trap, the transcription is the fix. IPAtics shows the IPA for any text you select, in any app, with one hotkey, and plays the word, so you can check a vowel, a silent letter or a stress mark the moment you read it. To convert text in the browser without installing anything, paste it into the English to IPA converter and choose US or UK, and keep the interactive IPA chart open for the symbols.

Sources

• Duguid, Alison. "Italian speakers." In Michael Swan and Bernard Smith (eds.), Learner English: A Teacher's Guide to Interference and Other Problems, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 73–89. doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511667121.007. The source for the regional variety of Italian speakers.
• Wikipedia, "Non-native pronunciations of English", Italian section: spelling pronunciations such as walk and boiled, the merged vowel pairs, no schwa, the vowel after final consonants, th as /t/ and /d/, /ŋ/ with a /ɡ/, /s/ voiced before /m/, /n/ and /l/, and unaspirated /p/, /t/, /k/.
• Pronunciation Studio, "Italian Speakers' English Pronunciation Errors": a London pronunciation school's list, including the dropped and added h, the added final vowel, cat, cut and cart, the flat o of no and go, and sentence stress.
• Wikipedia, "Italian phonology": the seven vowels, length that is not phonemic, [ŋ] only before velars, and /s/ voiced before voiced consonants.
• Wikipedia, "Tuscan gorgia": the breathy c of la casa in Florence.