Italian orthography

Italian orthography (the conventions used in writing Italian) uses the Latin alphabet to write the Italian language. This article focuses on the writing of Standard Italian, based historically on the Florentine variety of Tuscan.

Written Italian is very regular and almost completely phonemic—having an almost one-to-one correspondence between letters (or sequences of letters) and sounds (or sequences of sounds). The main exceptions are that stress placement and vowel quality (for ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩) are not notated, ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩ may be voiced or not, ⟨i⟩ and ⟨u⟩ may represent vowels or semivowels, and a silent ⟨h⟩ is used in a very few cases other than the digraphs ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨gh⟩ (used for the hard ⟨c⟩ and ⟨g⟩ sounds before ⟨e⟩ and ⟨i⟩).

The base alphabet consists of 21 letters: five vowels (A, E, I, O, U) and 16 consonants. The letters J, K, W, X and Y are not part of the proper alphabet, but appear in words of ancient Greek origin (e.g. Xilofono), loanwords (e.g. "weekend"), foreign names (e.g. John), scientific terms (e.g. km) and in a handful of native words—such as the names Kalsa, Jesolo, Bettino Craxi, and Cybo, which all derive from regional languages. In addition, grave and acute accents may modify vowel letters; the circumflex is much rarer and is found only in older texts.

Double consonants represent true geminates and are pronounced as such: anno, "year", pronounced [ˈanno] (cf. English ten nails). The short–long length contrast is phonemic, e.g. ritto [ˈritto], "upright", vs. rito [ˈriːto], "rite, ritual", carro [ˈkarro], "cart, wagon", vs. caro [ˈkaːro], "dear, expensive".

The Italian alphabet has five vowel letters, ⟨a e i o u⟩. Of those, only ⟨a⟩ represents one sound value, while all others have two. In addition, ⟨e⟩ and ⟨i⟩ indicate a different pronunciation of a preceding ⟨c⟩ or ⟨g⟩ (see below).

In stressed syllables, ⟨e⟩ represents both open /ɛ/ and close /e/. Similarly, ⟨o⟩ represents both open /ɔ/ and close /o/ (see Italian phonology for further details on those sounds). There is typically no orthographic distinction between the open and close sounds represented, although accent marks are used in certain instances (see below). There are some minimal pairs, called heteronyms, where the same spelling is used for distinct words with distinct vowel sounds. In unstressed syllables, only the close variants occur.

In addition to representing the vowels /i/ and /u/, ⟨i⟩ and ⟨u⟩ also typically represent the semivowels /j/ and /w/, when unstressed and occurring before another vowel. Many exceptions exist (e.g. attuale, deciduo, deviare, dioscuro, fatuo, iato, inebriare, ingenuo, liana, proficuo, riarso, viaggio). An ⟨i⟩ may indicate that a preceding ⟨c⟩ or ⟨g⟩ is "soft" (ciao).

The letters ⟨c⟩ and ⟨g⟩ represent the plosives /k/ and /ɡ/ before ⟨r⟩ and before the vowels ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩. They represent the affricates /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ when they precede a front vowel (⟨i⟩ or ⟨e⟩).