Friday 11 April 2014

No J for Italy

My A-Z Challenge series is about Italy, it's lifestyle, the country and other miscellaneous things in regard to it.


Italy has no letter J. In fact there are only 21 letters as opposed to our 26. I'm not sure how they would manage an A-Z Challenge, maybe they's need to do one in February and fiddle about with it a bit.

There are also no K W X or Y letters. The H pronounced as acca is always silent An Italian learning English has trouble sounding this letter out and often makes mistakes mixing it up, like  when my father will say 'I H'am 'ot instead of I am hot.

Other differences are pronouncing C as Ch and Ch as C. Double letters are both sounded out by pronouncing the first of the doubles and then the second seamlessly, to the untrained ear you may not hear them both.Certain other differences are when G and L are put together in a word as this is pronounced as 'lee' with many mispronunciations by English speakers with some words, for instance tagliatelle is meant to be pronounced ta lee atell ay and not tag lee a tell ee.

Tomorrow is K, I haven't yet decided on this letter but it won't be from any word in the Italian language as there won't be one, so if anyone has any ideas do let me know, please.


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