How to improve your Italian accent
In Italian there are many different accents, every region has its own.
There is also a neutral accent that cannot be linked to any particular Italian region. You can hear this accent in dubbed films and documentaries and it is also used by professional speakers and by some Italian actors and tv presenters.
You can fine-tune your accent and make it sound more natural by learning the phonetic rules.
We are talking about open and closed vowels that correspond to an open and a closed sound respectively. To identify them, as a phonetic reference, we use the accent (N.B. only at the end of the word in writing)
Let's have a look at the vowel "E"
OPEN VOWEL:
Grave accent: è /ɛ/
CLOSED VOWEL:
Acute accent: é /e/
To know when to use which, we have to pay attention to the end of the word. For example:
Open E
- In the present continuos -èndo
prendèndo, credèndo, bevèndo, scrivèndo, etc.
- In the conditional
farèi, farèbbe, leggerèi etc.
Closed E
- Imperfetto indicativo
Facévo, dicévi, tenéva etc.
These are only a couple of examples. Check out this dictionary to listen to an example http://www.dizionario.rai.it/ricerca.aspx
8 novembre 2017
