Italian stress

From UniLang Wiki

In Italian the stress can be on any syllable from the fifth from the end to the last.

• telefonaglielo (tell him that by telephone)
• capitano (they happen)
• carattere (character)
• capitano (captain)
• capitanò (he captained)

In normal writing the accent mark is put only on oxytone words (the stress is on the last syllable).
Monosyllabic words only have accent marks in certain cases (see below).

• città
• virtú
• perché
• caffè
• cosí
• però

Some notes about grave and acute accent

In Italian there are seven different vowel sounds,

• a,u and i have one,
• e and o have both two sounds, open and closed.

for more information, refer to Italian pronunciation

• on a the mark is always grave: à
• on u and i there are different opions
  • most people use a grave accent: ù, ì
  • But some people, including an eminent publisher use ú, í
  • as you can see above, I use í and ú too
• on o there's always a grave accent mark, since final 'o' is always open.
  but if you put it in the middle of a word (to show it's that word and not its homograph the mark can be also acute:
  • àncora ancóra
• on e there can be grave o acute. It's grave è if the e is open ɛ, acute (é) if the e is closed e
  • as a rule of thumb
    • names normally have grave accent mark
      • caffè, tè
    • other words have an acute one
      • sé, perché
      • compound numbers with 3: trentatré (33)
      • some names: viceré

Note that these rules are ignored by many italians.

Notes on monosyllables

An accent mark is put on a monosyllabic word in case of omographies:
example: la (article=the fem. sing), là (adverb, there)

Normally the precedence about taking the mark is:

• If one of the word is a name, then is the name which take the stress
  • tè (tea), te (you)
• same for verbs
  • dà (he gives), da (from)
  • è (s/he is), e (and)
• Otherwise is the adverb
  • là (there), la (article)
  • sí (yes), si (reflexive III pers. pron)
• Then pronouns
  • sé (him/it/oneself), se (if)

Musical notes don't take accent

• do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si

Nor do words that are homonymes of just musical notes:

• do (I give)
• re (king)
• mi (me)
• fa (he does)