| Hello everyone, welcome back to ItalianPod101.com. My name is Desy, 'mi chiamo Desy,' and in this video, we're going to talk about some basic sounds in Italian: vowels. |
| Le vocali |
| As you may know, the vowels in Italian are five, so five letters but seven sounds. Maybe tricky, but that's what we're gonna learn together. Even though when we learn them, it's common to group them as 'a-e-i-o-u.' I know I said that super fast, 'a-e-i-o-u'. Since 'e' and 'o' have two different sounds, in this case 'una vocale aperta' or 'vocale chiusa', we talk about seven sounds, and in order to learn them, we are gonna use a different order. |
| Okay, so to make the sound 'i,' you wanna think that you're smiling, so the corners of your mouth are looking up, right? But what you need to pay attention to is the position of 'la lingua', so the tongue inside your mouth. You want the tongue to be touching the palate there at the back, 'i,' 'i.' Not closing the tongue with your teeth, like 'e.' Of course, you see there's no air going out, right? Now I'm stressing the 'i': |
| Isola (island) |
| Now I'm stressing the 'i', 'isola'. |
| You want to smile, right? |
| India |
| Now to pronounce the 'é, e chiusa,' so the closed one, you want to keep the same position that you have when you pronounce 'i,' 'i,' and just make sure that the sides of your tongue don't touch the rest of the mouth anymore, and at the end goes a bit down. But you just want the tongue to move, not the whole mouth, right? So from 'i,' 'i,' it goes to 'é', 'é', so you see the mouth is still closed. You are just moving the tongue a bit from 'i' to 'é'. It can't be a long sound, right? 'é' it doesn't have to be long because otherwise it's easier for it to become an open sound, right? |
| Of course, when you talk, you don't think that much about the position of 'la lingua,' right? Try not to move the mouth, just make some space for the 'a' to go to the sides too, okay? While for 'è, e aperta,' we have an accent that is called 'grave,' and in this case, it's, in my opinion, it's easier because you just open your mouth. 'La lingua è rilassata', the tongue is relaxed, so it's not from 'lui', we said we just move the 'lingua,' but it goes down, right? 'È' |
| You want to make more space for air to go out, so you also have to move the tongue down so that you have more space. |
| Let's pretend that this is how much you can open your mouth, right? So for the one that is called 'chiusa,' you want to keep your mouth shut as much as you can, 'é'. |
| If you want to try with the same word but two different sounds, then use the word 'pesca,' okay? 'Pèsca,' as I just said, when it's open, 'pèsca.' So I don't think too much about keeping my mouth closed. I just say 'pèsca.' That's the peach, the 'frutto,' fruits, right? 'Pesca.' |
| While if you want to try and keep your mouth as closed as possible, 'pésca.' Not 'pèsca,' but 'pésca.' You can think of it as a shorter version if it helps you. And in that case is to fish. |
| So from the open 'è', 'la e aperta', it's easy to talk about 'a,' 'a.' So from 'è' you open your mouth even more, and then you just let the air out, right? 'A', 'a': |
| Albero |
| Amico |
| Automobile |
| 'Albero' is tree, 'amico' is friend, and 'automobile' car. |
| From 'a' you just close your lips, not the whole mouth, but just the lips, and the tongue is a bit at the back. While 'a' you can even say 'a' somehow. With 'ò', 'ò' since the lips close a bit, there is no space for 'la lingua', right? There is no space to stick your tongue out, right? So it's just 'ò', 'ò': |
| Orològio (clock) |
| Ó: For this sound, you have to put your lips a bit closer. So not 'ò' but like this, like you want to whistle, kind of…I'm not able to, but anyway. And while before the tongue was at the back, we said like 'ò', 'ò,' it doesn't touch anything inside the mouth, right? |
| For the second one, you want to press it against the rest of the mouth, like you can almost not let any air go out, like there's less space for air to go out, like with the 'é' that we practiced before, right? But the position of the lips are different. |
| And again, here too, if you want to practice with the same word, there is one, and it's 'botte': |
| Bòtte (beating) |
| As I said it right now, like 'bòtte' with an open sound, like there's a lot of space in between my 'lingua' the tongue, and the rest of the mouth. It's like I'm beating you up, basically, because it's when I kick you or punch you. |
| Here too, you can try like with not giving yourself too much space to open your mouth: |
| Bótte (barrel) |
| In this case, it's the barrel where you keep your whiskey or wine. |
| But don't worry too much because actually when the word is inside a phrase, so in the middle of the sentence, it's not like we need to make such a difference by sound because it's pretty obvious depending on the context. |
| Something else that can help you with this 'ó chiusa' with this sound, is thinking about the letter 'u.' As before with 'i' and 'e', where the position is almost the same, with 'u' and' 'o' like: |
| Umberto (which is a name for a male one) |
| Uomo (man) |
| If you really want to practice and also learn a word, my favorite one, especially when I was a kid, is 'aiuola' which is the single form for flowerbed, and it has almost all vowels inside, right? But if you make it plural, 'aiuole', then you can practice all the vowels all together: |
| aiuole |
| Let me know in the comments which one is the hardest for you to pronounce. Keep practicing, and if you haven't done it yet, remember to go to ItalianPod101.com and sign up for your free lifetime account so that you can actually learn in the easiest, fastest, and most fun way possible. Please like and subscribe. I'll see you soon. 'Ciao ciao.' Bye bye. |
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