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Italian grammar is the body of rules describing the properties of the Italian language. Italian words can be divided into the following lexical categories : articles, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.
s followed by a voiced consonant becomes voiced [z], as in Italian. scc is pronounced [ʃtʃ], like sc of the Italian word scena followed sonorously by c of the Italian word cilindro. x is read [ʒ] like the French j (e.g. jambon, jeton, joli). z, even when it is doubled as zz, is always pronounced [z] as the s in the Italian word rosa. [9]
The equivalents of Italian contadino, piccioni, and cane ('farmer, pigeons, dog') are contadì, picció, and cà. [1] The presence of the ending -aro or -aru (from Latin -ārium) where Italian instead has -aio. [1] The fact that the general masculine singular ending in nouns and adjectives may be /u/, rather than the /o/ found in Italian.
The Italian Rhaeto-Romance languages, including Ladin and Friulian. The poorly researched Istriot language. The Venetian language (sometimes grouped with the majority Gallo-Italian languages). The Gallo-Italian languages, including all the rest (although with some doubt regarding the position of Ligurian).
In Italian phonemic distinction between long and short vowels is rare and limited to a few words and one morphological class, namely the pair composed by the first and third person of the historic past in verbs of the third conjugation—compare sentii (/senˈtiː/, "I felt/heard'), and sentì (/senˈti/, "he felt/heard").
Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, specifically on its Florentine dialect, and it became the language of culture throughout Italy [1] because of the prestige of the works by Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Francesco Guicciardini.
The Italian language has developed through a long and slow process, which began after the Western Roman Empire's fall and the onset of the Middle Ages in the 5th century. [24] Latin, the predominant language of the western Roman Empire, remained the established written language in Europe during the Middle Ages, although most people were illiterate.
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"), [2] 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 ...