Other Letters
In addition to being used to indicate a hard ⟨c⟩ or ⟨g⟩ before front vowels, ⟨h⟩ is also used to distinguish ho, hai, ha, hanno (present indicative of avere, 'to have') from o ('or'), ai ('to the'), a ('to'), anno ('year'); since ⟨h⟩ is always silent, there is no difference in the pronunciation of such words. In foreign loanwords, the h is still silent: hovercraft /ˈɔverkraft/.
⟨Z⟩ represents an alveolar affricate consonant; either voiced /dz/ (zanzara /dzanˈdzara/ 'mosquito') or voiceless /ts/ (nazione /naˈttsjone/ 'nation'), depending on context, though there are few minimal pairs.
⟨S⟩ also is ambiguous to voicing; it can represent /s/ or /z/. However, these two phonemes are in complementary distribution everywhere except between two vowels in the same word and, even in such environments, there are very few minimal pairs.
The letters J ("I lunga" ), K ("cappa"), W ("V doppia" or "doppia V" ), X ("ics") and Y ("ipsilon" or "I greca" ) are used for loanwords only.
Read more about this topic: Italian Alphabet
Famous quotes containing the word letters:
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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