h, q, the five foreign letters and the accents

h: the letter you never hear

The last two letters of the Italian alphabet itself are h and q. h is never pronounced. At the start of a word it appears only in four forms of the verb “to have”: ho (I have), hai, ha, hanno. ho is said simply “o” – the h is there for the eye, to show which word it is. (Inside the groups ch and gh it has a job, and that is the next unit.)

Capital H: two posts, then the bar between them. Small h: a tall post and one arch. Capital Q: an O with a short tail across its lower right. Small q: the round part, then a straight line down its right side, below the row.

q never comes alone: it is always followed by u, and qu sounds “kw”: qui (here), quando (when), questo (this).

Five guests: j, k, w, x, y

j, k, w, x and y are not part of the Italian alphabet proper. You meet them only in words and names from other languages, and those keep roughly their foreign sound: jeans, kiwi, weekend, taxi, yogurt. They still have Italian names, and you will need them to spell an e-mail address.

Capital J: a line down that hooks to the left at the bottom. Small j: a line that drops below the row and curls left, then the dot. K: the post, then a stroke from the upper right in to the middle, then one from there out to the lower right.

W: four slanted lines – down, up, down, up – like two v side by side. X: two slanted lines that cross in the middle.

Capital Y: a small v on top of a post. Small y: a short slant to the middle, then a long slant from the upper right down below the row.

The accent mark is spelling

When the stress falls on the LAST vowel of a word, Italian writes an accent mark on it: città (city), caffè (coffee), più (more), però (but). The mark usually slopes down to the right: à, è, ì, ò, ù. On e there are two: è is an open e, é a closed one, as in perché (why; because). The mark is not decoration – it can be the only difference between two words: è (is) and e (and), là (there) and la (the), sì (yes) and si (a small pronoun you will meet later).

First write the letter, then the mark, as one short stroke above it. On à, è, ì it falls from upper left to lower right; on é it rises. On ì the mark takes the place of the dot.

The same short stroke on o and u, falling to the right, written last.

Il caffè è qui.The coffee is here.

Sì, è vero.Yes, it is true.