Phonetics Guide
Learn the sounds of Italian with our comprehensive IPA guide. Understand how each phoneme is pronounced with real word examples.
Vowels
Monophthong vowel sounds
Short "e" sound as in "bed"
Short "oo" sound as in "put"
Long "ee" sound as in "see"
Short "i" sound as in "sit"
Long "aw" sound as in "law"
Schwa - unstressed neutral vowel
Long "oo" sound as in "too"
"a" sound as in "cat"
Short "o" sound as in "lot" (British)
"uh" sound as in "cup"
Diphthongs
Gliding vowel sounds
"ow" sound as in "now"
Long "i" sound as in "my"
"oy" sound as in "boy"
Long "a" sound as in "day"
Consonants
Consonant sounds
Voiceless alveolar plosive
Voiceless alveolar fricative
Alveolar approximant
Alveolar nasal
Bilabial nasal
Alveolar lateral approximant
Voiceless velar plosive
Voiced alveolar plosive
Voiceless bilabial plosive
Voiced bilabial plosive
Voiced labiodental fricative
"y" sound as in "yes"
"sh" sound as in "she"
"zh" sound as in "measure"
Voiceless labiodental fricative
Voiced alveolar fricative
"ch" sound as in "church"
"w" sound as in "we"
"j" sound as in "judge"
"ng" sound as in "sing"
Voiceless glottal fricative
Common Patterns
Frequent phonetic patterns