From letters to sounds

1. The main difference concerning the vowel system is that while the Engl. letter "a" corresponds to different sounds in "ask, back, name, what, talk, orange" and is silent in the second syllable of "captain", Italian "a" always has the same sound [a] (similar to the vowel in "palm, father, ask, car" etc.) in all contexts, and whether it is stressed or unstressed. This means that the vowels in “casa, patata, banana” are all pronounced alike, with the last-but-one bearing the word-stress.

1a. The same largely applies to the other vowels. The sounds of "e" and "o" are described in the respective pages: "e", "o" . "Silent i" is described here

2. The pronunciation of " b, d, f, l, m, n, p, t, v " is similar to the pronunciation of the Eng. consonants with the same spelling.

The combination of points 1. and 2. makes it convenient to use the alphabet as a base for describing It. pronunciation.

Remarks

Another major difference is the length of consonants, for which see

The Eng. consonant sounds in "THree, THis, House and viSion are not part of the It. sound system.

"Similar" here means "by no means identical". Beside the differences between the two languages, there are also regional and/or personal variations within each of them, e.g. "Scottish r" or “Sicilian s”. Most of these differences are not significant.

Unless otherwise specified, the variety of English considered here is standard Southern British English, as described in most British dictionaries and in phonetics books (the so-called Received Pronunciation).

No vowels are silent. The only exception, “silent i”, will be discussed here

No consonants are silent. The only exception, “silent h”, will be discussed here

The above remarks do not apply to foreign words used in Italian. Some of them will be discussed where relevant.

You are advised to start from the main page of the Pronunciation and spelling section