Stress is the audible accent that you put on a syllable as you speak it. One
syllable always gets more stress than all the others. Although there is no
strict rule, in most Italian words the accent or stress falls on the penultimate
syllable. But for this rule there are too many exceptions.
In Italian, only vowels have accents. All vowels at the end of a word can
have this accent (`), but only the “e” can have both (`) and (´). The difference
lies only in the pronunciation. That is, è is pronounced very open, as in
“hell”, whereas é is more closed, as in “gourmet”. Here are some examples:
- Caffè ("kahf-feh") » coffee
- Città ("cheet-tah") » city
- Lunedì ("loo-neh-dee") » Monday
- Perché ("pehr-keh") » why; because
- Però ("peh-roh") » but
- Università ("oo-nee-vehr-see-tah") »
university
- Virtù ("veer-too") » virtue
Is very unusual for Italian words to be spelt with accented letters, with
very few exceptions discussed further in this page.
In ordinary spelling accented vowels are allowed, but very seldom used. Only
in two cases accented vowels are commonly used:
- Words whose last syllable carries the accent:
There are many words of this kind in Italian (nouns, verb inflections,
adverbs, etc.), and some are frequently used. An accent is compulsory in this
case, otherwise the stress would not be heard. Furthermore, in some cases the
same word spelt without an accent even has a different meaning (see further
down). A few words with a similar spelling, but whose last syllable is not
stressed, are shown on the right:
- Perché » why, because
- Sarà » it will be
(Sara »
Sarah, a name)
- Perciò » therefore
- Papà »
dad (Papa »
pope)
- Però » but,
however (Pero »
pear-tree)
- Farò » I'll
do (Faro »
light-house)
- Più » more, plus
Also several compounds of che (pronounced "ke", meaning which, that) are
spelt with an accent:
- Perché » why, because
- Poiché » because
- Benché » despite
- Giacché » since
- Sicché » so, therefore etc.
A few words have a different
meaning when different syllables carry the accent. Note that the stress is in
the underlined syllable:
In this case, accents are not mandatory; in most cases they are not used,
therefore the correct pronunciation of the word is understood only by the
context of the phrase: for instance, considering the third couple of sample
words, in sentences such as "sometimes strange things happen" or "he is the
captain of the ship", neither of the two words could be mistaken with the
other.
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