Italian pronunciation

Italian words are pronounced phonetically.

Stress and accents

The stress of a word usually falls on the penultimate syllable. When it doesn't, there is often an accent mark to tip you off: così, ragù. This is the only purpose of accent marks in Italian. And they are always reversed accent marks, excepting 'e', which can go either way, depending on the pronunciation of the letter: caffè ('coff-eh'), perché (pair-kay).

Consonants

Consonants are generally pronounced as in English, with some exceptions. K, W, X and Y only occur in foreign words.

c, when followed by an ‘e’ or ‘i’, is pronounced like the English ‘ch’: città; c followed by 'a', 'o' or 'u' is hard: castello; ch is always a hard 'c': Chianti.

g: like 'c' is also soft before ‘i’ or ‘e’: generale; gh is a hard 'g': ghetto. gl: before 'a', 'o' and 'u', is pronounced as in English: gloria; before 'i' and 'e' it sounds like 'ly': Pagliacci. gn: like 'ny': gnocchi