How to Pronounce Italian Correctly (How to Pronounce)

Rating:
Summary: This is the first thing to buy when you learn Italian
Review: If you're going to spend hours and hours memorizing Italian vocabulary, you may as well practice a good accent at the very beginning. It would be a pity to learn all of those words, only to find that no one understands you.

How to Pronounce Italian Correctly begins with the vowels, a, e, i, o and u. Then, it teaches the dipthongs and tripthongs. Consonants come next, all 16 of them. The tape cassette also teaches consonant combinations and doubled consonants.

Next, the cassette teaches the proper stress in words and sentences. Finally, it teaches the correct intonation in statements, questions, words in a series and counting.

Rating:
Summary: For an authentic accent and pronunciation, buy this
Review: This cassette and booklet are perfect for serious students of the Italian language. It focuses on accurate pronunciation of vowels, dipthongs, tripthongs, consonants, double consonants and consonant combinations. It also goes over stress and intonation in words, sentences and questions.

The methods used are sound and the speaker utilizes the appropriate linguistic names for the types of sounds that you'll be making. (For instance, aspiration, vocalizations, plosives, etc...) The importance of including the linguistic aspects is merely to make the listener aware of how sounds are formed in the mouth. Because the differences in an Italian pp or dd and an American p or d are pretty, subtle, the speaker gives EXCELLENT examples in English for comparison.

Instructions are also given for exactly where in your mouth your tongue should be placed in order to make the most accurate sound.

The book does require that you have at least a basic Italian vocabulary. Mine is very small and I was still able to utilize this set. However, I wouldn't buy this as my first set of language tapes for Italian. It expects you to repeat entire sentences and questions that you may not have encountered before.

This cassette will not help you to improve your vocabulary. It will not provide you with new phrases. But, that's not its purpose. It primarily exists for those who have some knowledge of the language, but want to improve their pronunciation. It accomplishes that goal very well.