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Dove cade l'accento?
8 gün önceWhat 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 :)
