Italian guys. How can I learn the Italian intonation ? Are there any rules for the intonation?

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Paolo

oh god... Allora se tu impari l'italiano dipende molto di dove sei perche' ci sta l'accento di ognuno luckily 4 you my dear I understood what you have said, the thing is that you will never be able to learn the correct intonation if you are not from a latin country. anyway the correct answer is sÃ bato because in Italian we always put the intonation on the first vowel (vocal) if the words does not contain double consonants for example... abbracci meaning that you will have to put the intonation "the accent" on the first vowel that follows the double consonants meaning that you will have to put the intonation on the a from the middle and on the i.
If you need any more "chiarimenti" you can contact me cause my IM is public.

Paoletto

I'M ITALIAN!!!! THE CORRECT INTONATION IS THE NUMEBER 2: sÃ bato, SAbato!!!! THE ITALIAN PRONUNCIATION IS VERY DIFFICULT, AS ALL ITALIAN LANGUAGE!!! ITALIAN PEOPLE CAN'T UNDERSTAND YOU IF YOU SPEAK A WORD THAT HAVE 2 PRONUNCIATION AND 2 DIFFERENT MEANING!!! IF YOU WANT SOME ADVICE WRITE ME A E-MAIL!!!!

CIAO CIAO

dingomi

hello i am italian the correct pronunce is SAbato the first sillabe is stressed. if you use the second form we understand without problem is funny sound, for us writing and sound is always similar the sound of the letter never change, this happen in english or french.
bye

Don

I am a American who lived in Italy for 13 years and speak Italian fluently and the first is the correct one for that word but let me explain to you every little town has their own dialect and so it might sound the same but they throw is their own pronunciation of the word.
It great that you are trying to learn some words before you go, It took me almost 2 to 3 years before I started to understand it but the thing of of it is I learned from the people and how you are truly suppose to say the words and then it just starts to all fit after you speak it over and over again.

Commedia Dantesca

As all Italians wrote before me, the right intonation for sabato is SA-bato.

If there isn't another meaning for a word depending on where you put the accent, you won't have any problem in being understood, as Italians will do their best to understand what you want to say.

Just a few words are written the same way but have different accent and different meanings.
Example, word "subito":
SUbito (intonation on first vowel) means "now, immediately".
suBIto (intonation on second vowel) means "suffered".

Italy is one country since less than a couple of centuries (1861), more or less after Napoleon was defeated and the Restauration started, therefore what are now dialects where originally languages from all the regions that were something else before becoming Italy (Regno delle Due Sicilie, Granducato di Toscana, Regno di Sardegna, Repubblica Veneta and so on). We had Greek, Romans, Normans, French, Spanish and thousands of others.

Italy was split, invaded, unified, again divided and but together in a different way, shuffled so many times and by so many populations in history that it's almost a miracle we have one same language we all use to communicate...

If a person from Naples and one from Venice speak together in their own dialect they will not understand one single word.

All Italian people of course use official Italian for all purposes. So if you come from any country of the world to Italy, Italian people will not consider it a problem trying to communicate with you.

Just Tom

Every region has its own dialect. Trust me!!!! They will understand you as long as you keep it in context. When I first visited relatives in Italy in the early 90's and spoke Italian with them, they commented that my grammar was perfect, but the dialect sounded more from a southern province than the eastern or adriatic.

Megan

It's a general rule to stress the second to last syllable in the word. In words with accents on the end their purpose is to stress the last syllable.

However, I'm pretty sure that sabato isn't pronounced with an extra stress on the "ba" part. Because if you stress it too much there it sounds funny. If anything it might be on the "sa". To me it sounds equally flowing.

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