Italian Phonology - Regional Variation

Regional Variation

The above IPA symbols and description refer to standard Italian, based on a somewhat idealized version of the Tuscan-derived national language. As is common in many cultures, this single version of the language was pushed as neutral, proper, and eventually superior, leading to some stigmatization of varying accents. Television news anchors and other high-profile figures had to put aside their regional Italian when in the public sphere. However, in more recent years the enforcement of this standard has fallen out of favor in Italy, and news reporters, actors, and the like are now more free to deliver their words in their native regional variety of Italian, which appeals to the Italian population's range of linguistic diversity. The variety is still not represented in its wholeness and accents from the South are maybe to be considered less popular, except in shows set in the South and in comedy, a field in which Naples, Sicily and the South in general have always been present. Though it still represents the basics for the standard variety, the loosened restrictions have led to Tuscan being seen for what it is, just one dialect among many with its own regional peculiarities and qualities, many of which are shared with Umbria, Southern Marche and Northern Lazio.

• In Tuscany (though not in standard Italian, which is derived from, but not equivalent to Tuscan Italian), voiceless stops become fricatives between vowels. That is, /p t k/ → : e.g. capo ('head') . In a much more widespread area of Central Italy, postalveolar affricates are deaffricated when intervocalic so that in Cina ('in China') is pronounced but la Cina ('the China') is . Since /ʃ/ surfaces as long post-vocalically, this can produce minimal pairs distinguished only by length of the word-initial consonant: la cena vs. la scena.
• In nonstandard varieties of Central and Southern Italian, some stops at the end of a syllable completely assimilate to the following consonant. For example, a Venetian might say tecnica as in violation of normal Italian consonant contact restrictions, while a Florentine would likely pronounce tecnica as, a Roman on a range from to . Similarly, although the cluster /kt/ has developed historically as /tt/ through assimilation, a learned word such as ictus will be pronounced by some, by others.
• In popular (non-Tuscan) Central and Southern Italian speech, /b/ and /d͡ʒ/ tend to always be geminated ( and ) when between two vowels, or a vowel and a sonorant (/j/, /w/, /l/, or /r/). Sometimes this is also used in written language, e.g. writing robba instead of roba ("stuff" or "property"), to suggest a regional accent, though this spelling is considered incorrect. In Tuscany intervocalic (non geminated) /d͡ʒ/ is realized as (whereas intervocalic /t͡ʃ/ is realized as as in parts of Centro-Southern Italy).
• The two phonemes /s/ and /z/ have merged in many varieties of Italian: when between two vowels within the same word, it tends to always be pronounced in Northern Italy, and in Central and Southern Italy (except in the Arbëreshë community). A notable example is the word casa ('house'): in Northern Italy it is pronounced ; in Southern-Central Italy it's pronounced .
• In several Southern varieties, voiceless stops tend to become voiced if following a sonorant, as an influence of the still largely spoken regional languages: campo /'kampo/ becomes /'kambo/, and Antonio /an'tɔnjo/ becomes /an'dɔnjo/.