Italian Phonetic Alphabet
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Latest page update: 19 November 2024
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By Dion Protani
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The Italian Phonetic Alphabet works in a slightly different way to the systems used in the United Kingdom, the United States and other English-speaking countries.
Whereas most of us are familiar with terms such as Bravo, Delta and Foxtrot to clarify letters when speaking on the telephone for example, in Italian, those words are replaced by place names. |
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So let's say you're in the car somewhere and on the phone to a hotel receptionist to book your room for the night, you may be asked to spell your name phonetically. To make life easier, you could just memorise the letters you need to spell your own name before trying to remember them all, but the longer you spend in Italy, the more familiar the other letters will become.
It's also worth bearing in mind that the official Italian alphabet consists of only 21 letters. The five that don't appear in the Italian alphabet but do in English are J, K, W, X and Y. Those letters are in blue and italics in the list below.
Another collection of letters doesn't have a place name attached to them: H, Q and Z. For those three letters you don't have to rack your brain to think of a clever word, you just say the names of the letters so: acca (H), cu (Q) and zeta (Z). Each of these three letters has been highlighted in red below.
There are also some regional differences to the Italian phonetic alphabet: for example, someone from the south may use Palermo for the letter P while further north they may use Pisa. There's a similar situation with the letter S with Salerno used in the south and Siena used in the northern half of the country.
A - Ancona
B - Bologna
C - Como
D - Domodossola
E - Empoli
F - Firenze (Florence)
G - Genova (Genoa)
H - acca
I - Imola
J - I lunga
K - kappa
L - Livorno
M - Milano (Milan)
N - Napoli (Naples)
O - Otranto
P - Palermo
Q - cu
R - Roma (Rome)
S - Salerno
T - Torino (Turin)
U - Udine
V - Venezia (Venice)
W - doppia vu
X - ics
Y - ipsilon
Z - zeta
It's also worth bearing in mind that the official Italian alphabet consists of only 21 letters. The five that don't appear in the Italian alphabet but do in English are J, K, W, X and Y. Those letters are in blue and italics in the list below.
Another collection of letters doesn't have a place name attached to them: H, Q and Z. For those three letters you don't have to rack your brain to think of a clever word, you just say the names of the letters so: acca (H), cu (Q) and zeta (Z). Each of these three letters has been highlighted in red below.
There are also some regional differences to the Italian phonetic alphabet: for example, someone from the south may use Palermo for the letter P while further north they may use Pisa. There's a similar situation with the letter S with Salerno used in the south and Siena used in the northern half of the country.
A - Ancona
B - Bologna
C - Como
D - Domodossola
E - Empoli
F - Firenze (Florence)
G - Genova (Genoa)
H - acca
I - Imola
J - I lunga
K - kappa
L - Livorno
M - Milano (Milan)
N - Napoli (Naples)
O - Otranto
P - Palermo
Q - cu
R - Roma (Rome)
S - Salerno
T - Torino (Turin)
U - Udine
V - Venezia (Venice)
W - doppia vu
X - ics
Y - ipsilon
Z - zeta
Accented Vowels
While we're on the subject of the Italian alphabet, it's worth noting that there are accented versions of each vowel frequently used in Italian spelling and pronunciation, although it's unlikely you'd need to spell them out.
The grave accent
Each of the five vowels has an equivalent with the grave accent, where a little diagonal line runs from north east to south west (I personally think of these as pointing forwards but not everybody does) above the letter. These are commonly used in Italian and denote the way a word should be pronounced. Generally-speaking, if a word ends in a grave accented vowel, the emphasis should be on the final letter when pronouncing it.
An example of this is the English word "university". If you repeat the word, you'll realise you've put the emphasis on the middle syllable, the "ver". In Italian, the emphasis of università goes on the final syllable/letter.
à
example: università
è
example: è (third person of the verb "to be", or more simply "is")
ì
example: lunedì (the words for each day from Monday to Friday end in the grave i, as does the word for yes (sì)
ò
example: the grave ò is used either in place names such as Nardò, or more commonly, to show the future tense in the first person such as in "andrò" which means "I will go"
ù
example: Temù (town in Lombardy). The accented ù is less frequently used than the other grave vowels but nevertheless works in exactly the same way with the emphasis placed at the end of the word.
The letter e not only has a version with a grave accent, but another version with an acute accent. You could say the acute accent points forward instead of backwards, or alternatively, that it runs north west to south east.
The acute accent
é
Of the two versions of the accented e, this is the one that's used less. Its main usage comes in the word perché which means "why".
While we're on the subject of the Italian alphabet, it's worth noting that there are accented versions of each vowel frequently used in Italian spelling and pronunciation, although it's unlikely you'd need to spell them out.
The grave accent
Each of the five vowels has an equivalent with the grave accent, where a little diagonal line runs from north east to south west (I personally think of these as pointing forwards but not everybody does) above the letter. These are commonly used in Italian and denote the way a word should be pronounced. Generally-speaking, if a word ends in a grave accented vowel, the emphasis should be on the final letter when pronouncing it.
An example of this is the English word "university". If you repeat the word, you'll realise you've put the emphasis on the middle syllable, the "ver". In Italian, the emphasis of università goes on the final syllable/letter.
à
example: università
è
example: è (third person of the verb "to be", or more simply "is")
ì
example: lunedì (the words for each day from Monday to Friday end in the grave i, as does the word for yes (sì)
ò
example: the grave ò is used either in place names such as Nardò, or more commonly, to show the future tense in the first person such as in "andrò" which means "I will go"
ù
example: Temù (town in Lombardy). The accented ù is less frequently used than the other grave vowels but nevertheless works in exactly the same way with the emphasis placed at the end of the word.
The letter e not only has a version with a grave accent, but another version with an acute accent. You could say the acute accent points forward instead of backwards, or alternatively, that it runs north west to south east.
The acute accent
é
Of the two versions of the accented e, this is the one that's used less. Its main usage comes in the word perché which means "why".
