The use of accented vowels in common spelling

Accented vowels have been used in these examples. As previously said, they are allowed, but never used in ordinary spelling, except in two cases:

WORDS WHOSE LAST SYLLABLE CARRIES THE ACCENT There are many of them in Italian, and some are very common. An accent is compulsory in this case, otherwise the stress would not be heard. Sometimes, the spelling without an accent may even have a different meaning (see right column of the following example). In this case, accents are not compulsory, and are not often used, because the meaning of the word, and therefore its sound, is clearly understood by the context of the phrase: in expressions like "such things happen" or "he is the captain", a misunderstanding would be almost impossible. Focus your attention on the third sample above: in the first noun (règia), the gia cluster makes only one syllable (syllables are re + gia), therefore the pronounciation of cluster "..jah" follows the sound table shown in paragraph 1.2. In the second one (regìa), instead, the same cluster makes two separate syllables (re + gì + a), so the sound too splits into "re-jyh-ah" because only syllable gi carries the accent, not the final a.

Types of accent used in italian spelling

This part of the paragraph is not really fundamental, although some readers might have noticed how most accents are slanted rightwards (perciò, sarà), while a few others are slanted in the opposite direction (perché). Modern Italian uses the following accented vowels:

rightward or "grave" accents ("wide" sound pronounciation)	à	è	ì	ò	ù
leftward or "acute" accents ("narrow" sound pronounciation)		é

(eventually, see again paragraph 1.1 for the pronounciation of wide "e" and narrow "e"). From the table above, you can see how only e has both forms, while others use a more generic rightwards accent, as a standard. The reason for this difference is that Italian has several words with accent on the last syllable e: some of them have an "wide" sound, and some have a narrow "sound". The few words which end with an accented o, instead, always give this vowel the "wide" pronounciation. So only accented e needs to be specified. The following words end with a stressed "wide" e:

è	"eh"	he/she/it is
caffè	"kah'ffeh"	coffee
frappè	"frah'ppeh"	fruit-flavoured milk shake

Others instead have a "narrow" sound:

perché	"pehrkeh"	why, because
sé	"seh"	self, one's self

Just as perché, the compound words which contain che (already mentioned above) always have end with a "narrow" e (acute accent). In very few cases, an accented e may be used within the word, to indicate whether the vowel has a wide or narrow sound:

pèsca (with a wide e)

= peach

pésca (narrow e)

= fishing

Nevertheless, such accent is rarely spelled because the context of the sentence makes it quite clear which of the two makes more sense in the sentence. Words with stress on the last syllable, but ending with a different vowel, simply use the rightwards accent:

già	"jah"	yet, already
lunedì	"lwhnehdyh"	monday
andrò	"ahndroh"	I will go
giù	"jwh"	down

When typing these accents with a computer, most non-Italian people might find themselves in trouble because a standard keyboard does not have these letters. You can use the ASCII chart, by entering their code numbers while pressing the Alt key: try yourself, by typing them in the box below.