In general, Italian is a phonetic language. If you practice enough, you should eventually be able to pronounce most Italian words without listening to an audio transcription or referring to a dictionary. Knowing which syllable to stress in a polysyllabic word (having more than one syllable) in Italian is critical to speaking comprehensibly and achieving fluency.
The good news is that, unlike in English, where syllable stress seems more arbitrary, there are some syllable stress rules in Italian that diminish the role for guessing and allow you to be right most of the time. It is important to ensure that you master these rules early on as you build your vocabulary.
Go over the rules in this lesson, and use the Anki flashcards of this lesson to practice syllable stress in Italian with more vocabulary.
The main syllable stress rules in Italian are:
1. If the last letter is a vowel with an accent, the stress falls on the last syllable.
For example, “città” (city) /cheet-ta/, “caffè” (coffee) /kaf-fe/, and “perché” (why) /per-ke/.
Notice the stressed syllable in the pronunciation script is in bold.
2. Most other words in Italian stress the second-to-last syllable, also called the penultimate syllable.
3. Some words stress the third-to-last syllable. Most of these words end with the following suffixes:
| -agine | -aggine | -igine | -iggine | -uggine |
| -edine | -udine | -abile | -ibile | -atico |
| -ico | -aceo | -ognolo | -oide | -tesi |
| -dromo | -fago | -filo | -fobo | -fono |
| -metro | -nomo | -gono | -grafo | -logo |
| -crate | -cefalo | -gamo | -geno | -mane |
| -stato | -ttero | -fero | -fugo | -evole |
For example, “microfono” (microphone): mee-kro-fo-no, “fotografo” (photograph): fo-to-gra-fo, “sinonimo” (synonym): see-no-nee-mo, etc.
4. In rare cases, and often in some conjugated verbs, the stress falls on the fourth-to-last syllable.
For example, “telefonano” (they call): te-le-fo-na-no.
Next: Similarities & Differences – English & Italian
Other lessons in Level I:
