Italian Course Beginner Series Lesson 7: The Vowels Video Lecture | Learn Italian Language: For Beginners and Travellers

hello guys and welcome to these Italian
tutorial my name is Claudio and I'm just
gonna do something that most teachers
wouldn't do I'm going to teach you the
pronunciation before teaching you most
of the grammar so it's something very
strange most people teach the grammar
first and in this course I decided to
teach pronunciation before grandma
because I think it's more important at
the end of the day communication is an
exchange of sounds and there's no point
in learning anything if you can't
express yourself in proper way also if
you learn things wrong the first time
around then it's very difficult to to
change and correct okay so this is the
phonemic chart or phonetic alphabet and
it's a map of all the sounds in the
English language so you know all these
sounds already so you don't have to
worry about these so what are we going
to do today I don't know today we are
going to get rid of all the consonants
because that's what we're going to do
next time and we are going to focus on
vowels of course vowels are much more
important than consonants as far as
understanding each other is concerned so
you want to speak well and in order to
do that you have to learn how to
pronounce the Italian bowels well so in
English you have a lot of sounds that
you can make with the with the vowels so
you can have the sound e like in read
you can have the sound it like in sit or
pit and so on and then you have
diphthongs diphthongs are these sounds
and they're called diphthongs because
they are basically two sounds together
it's a sound that is changing throughout
like here
basically you don't have any diphthong
in Italian so good news all we have to
worry about is these sounds right here
these are the pure vowels and they are e
it but ooh or ah-ah-ah-ah
and these are of course there are slight
differences between accent and accent
but they are part of the English
language and you should know all of
these now as you can see they are 12 so
we have 12 different sounds and what we
are learning today is five Italian
sounds the reason why we only learn five
is because with the vowels you can only
make five sounds in Italian and not 12
so again this is really good news
let's get rid of the schwa sound
ah the neutral sound that is very common
in English because it doesn't exist in
Italian now if I get the right tool here
we are
okay
and we basically put the again I'm
messing around and we replace it with
this basically this sound is pronounced
a in Italian and the reason why I place
it here is because it's very similar to
the sound of men or trend or send in
English but it's not quite as white the
mouth is not quite as wide when you
pronounce it so it's not app but it's
ear of course it's not as long as a word
or world therefore we place it right
here in the middle then we have the
sound ah ah
again we get rid of this that we don't
have an Italian and we place it right
here in between our cats and our car or
part and we place it here in the middle
for the same reason it's because the
sound itself is a bit of a mixture
between these two English sounds so it's
pronounced ah ah then we take this this
is pronounced e E and sounds very
similar to e in English like read or
breathe and it also sounds similar to a
of sit pit trick slip but again is a bit
of a mixture of of these two sounds so
we place it in the middle because that's
its place then we move on to or OH
oh and Oh needs to be right here in
between all like north or sort or sword
and uh of not plot stop as you can see
this R is not as wide as our in stop and
not as long as all in North but again
it's somewhere in between and the last
Italian sound is ooh ooh and it's in
between off book and o of two so here we
are we have learned these five hours now
these sounds are by far the most
important sounds in the whole entire
language and these are the only sounds
that you can make in Italian with vowels
and because the because of the way the
Italian language itself is constructed
basically you have always the same
sounds when you have vowels so basically
when you have the word canny
you read the letter A ah
and you don't care about the context so
no matter what word the letter a is in
you're always going to pronounce it the
same so it's not like in English where
you kind of get rid of the end of the
word and pronounce it neutral for
instance of the English Way of
pronouncing the word pasta is pasta but
in Italian is pronounced pasta pasta so
there's just as much emphasis on the
second a as there is on the first one
so if you know how to pronounce this
letter ah ah then you can pronounce
all the words that contain that letter
because as soon as you find it you read
it the way it's pronounced and it
doesn't change it's always pronounced in
the same way same is the case in the
case of Mario Mario doesn't read Mario
it reads ma Eddie Oh Mario Mario Mario
you basically pronounce each letter
individually and that sound doesn't get
altered and it stays the same no matter
what word what context again in here
Connie Connie it's not can or can e it's
Connie this is because the letter e is
always pronounced a can it and the
letter A is always pronounced ah as
we've seen so I think this was a quick
video but it's probably I don't want to
say the most important one but this is
certainly one of the most important
concepts of the whole entire language so
if you're passionate about learning
Italian if you're planning a learning
Italian if you want to become fluent
then you must practice these vowels so
practice this week and make sure that
you know how to pronounce these sounds
before the beginning of the next video
before watching the next video and even
if you don't don't worry keep practicing
remember that it's very important and if
you have a question don't be afraid to
ask or post a comment anyway I hope
you've enjoyed this video I will see you
guys in the next one until then take
care