This part is not really fundamental for a beginner, who might want to skip it. However, some readers may have noticed that in most cases the accented vowels bear a grave accent, i.e. slanted leftwards (perciò, sarà), while a few others are slanted in the opposite direction (perché).
Modern Italian uses the following set of accented vowels:
| "grave" accents. slanted leftwards ("wide" sound pronunciation) |
à | è | ì | ò | ù |
| "acute" accent. slanted rightwards ("narrow" sound pronunciation) |
é |
It has already been said that when the accent is carried by the last syllable, an accented vowel has to be used. Since most vowels only take the grave accent, this is the only one that can be used:
| andrà | he/she will go | lunedì | monday |
| là | there | finì | it finished |
| falò | great fire, pire | laggiù | down there, over there |
| però | but | più | more - plu |
Only the vowel e can take two different accents; according to the word, either one or the other should be used. These are examples of words whose final e bears a grave accent ("wide" sound):
| è | he/she/it |
| caffè | coffee or coffee-bar |
| frappè | milk shake |
In other words, instead, the final e bears the acute accent ("narrow" sound):
| perché | why, because |
| né | not, nor, neither |
| sé | self, one's self |
In very few cases, an accented e can be very useful to mark the stressed syllable, thus the correct sound of the vowel:
| pèsca ("wide" e) » | peach | pésca ("narrow" e) » | fishing |
Also in this case the accent is not mandatory; actually, many people spell both words pesca (i.e. with a normal e), because the context of the sentence is enough to understand which of the two makes more sense.