Italian spelling tells you almost everything about pronunciation — except, usually, which syllable to stress. The good news: most words follow one pattern, and the rest are learnable.
Three stress patterns
- Most words: stress on the second-to-last syllable — CA-sa, ra-GAZ-zo, i-ta-LIA-no.
- Many common words: stress on the third-to-last — TA-vo-lo, MAC-chi-na, TE-le-fo-no, SA-ba-to.
- Stress on the last syllable — in words of two or more syllables it's always written with an accent: città, caffè, perché, venerdì, università.
Accents that change meaning
- è (is) — e (and)
- sì (yes) — si (oneself, a reflexive pronoun)
- là (there) — la (the, her)
- tè (tea) — te (you, after a preposition)
Il caffè è pronto? — Sì, è là, sul tavolo.
The classic learner mistake: in the 'loro' (they) form of verbs, the stress stays where it was in the 'io' form. PAR-lo → PAR-la-no, not par-LA-no; la-VO-ro → la-VO-ra-no. Say it the right way a few times and your Italian will immediately sound more natural.