Dove cade l'accento?

8 giorni fa

What is an accent? An accent indicates the emphasis given to a syllable within a word. Italian has a "free" or mobile accent system, meaning stress can fall on any syllable.

Syllables are counted backwards, starting from the last one!

Word categories and their accents:

Tronca (last syllable): è, caffè, gioventù
Piana (penultimate): casa, amico, monumento
Sdrucciola (third-to-last): facile, medico, simbolo
Bisdrucciola (fourth-to-last): telefonano, mostramela
Less common:

Trisdrucciola (fifth-to-last): comunicamelo
The vast majority of Italian words are piane. When encountering an unfamiliar word, your best bet is to stress the penultimate syllable — this will be correct most of the time.

Predictable patterns:

Two-syllable nouns ending in vowels are piani: cane, casa
Nouns ending in -agine, -igine, -edine, -udine are sdruccioli
Adjectives ending in -abile, -evole, -ibile, -aceo, -ico, -ognolo, -oide are sdruccioli
Conjugated verbs:

Third-person plural forms of indicativo presente,  imperfetto, condizionale presente are sdrucciole: loro cantano, loro mettevano, loro partirebbero
Hard truth: There are no precise rules for determining accent placement; you simply need to listen and practise :)