🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1997Feb6.151657.4384@jarvis.cs.toronto.edu>, Grzegorz Kondrak 
<kondrak@cs.toronto.edu> says...

>Alfredo Moscianese <alfredo@anteo.it> writes:

>>b) the great majority of non-Central Italians follow their regional 
>>pronunciation of <e> and <o>, not only when speaking dialect but also
>>when speaking strictly standard Italian

>Does it mean that a student of Italian doesn't have to worry about two
>e's and two o's ?

Difficult question. Anyway note that Italians, which are used to very 
different regional pronunciations of stressed e's and o's (and, by the 
way, of s's and z's, since we also have two s's and two z's) are able to 
understand words, no matter how they are pronounced. Furthermore, since 
the rythm of a foreigner sounds (with exceptions) "strange", unusual 
pronuciation of e's and o's is considered the rule (of his/her "virtual" 
dialect, i.e. his/her mother tongue). So probably the correct answer to 
your question is: pronounce tonic e's and o's as they sounds right to you 
(and use, if wre want, two e's and two o's); you can always change the 
pronunciation.

By the way, here were I live (near Milan) I cannot pronounce a lot of 
words with their "correct" Tuscan pronunciation; I could, of course, but 
due to my northern rythm with Bergamask inflections, they could sound 
ridicoulus.

>Is there any dialect that uses just one phoneme for both?

I've never heard such a dialect (perhaps somebody can help): however note 
that, at present, also dialects are influenced by Italian (often horrible) 
spoken by radio and TV.

Ciao.

Gian Carlo Macchi  macchi@scn.de