Accents

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Gli accenti scritti

Accents may look strange to anyone whose native language doesn’t have any, but they are extremely important in Italian. Leaving off the accent on a word is a spelling mistake, and may cause confusion.

There are two different Italian accents – detailed lessons coming soon.

Accent		Found on	What it does	Per esempio…
`	grave	a, i, u e, o	Indicates that stress is on final syllable Indicates stress + closed vowel pronunciation	città caffè	city coffee
´	acuto acute	a, i, u e, o	Indicates that stress is on final syllable Indicates stress + open vowel pronunciation	cosí perché	so why, because

  Please note: In the very small bit of research I’ve done so far, Italian accents seem to be a divisive topic. I am going to address this in detail, particularly the question of whether the acute accent is – or should be – found at the end of words like cosí. Even Italians don’t all agree, but I will do my very best to find the writing system considered correct by the greatest number of people.

 Related features

• How to type Italian accents
• More Italian pronunciation
   

 En español

• Los acentos
   

 En français

• Les accents
   

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