\chapter{Alfabeto (Italian alphabet)}

Italian is written using the Latin alphabet, with larger graphemes made as necessary. It also has rules for capitalization similar but slightly less complicated than English.
\begin{itemize}
\item First letter of a sentence or title 
\item First letter of proper nouns
\end{itemize}

Italian orthography is extremely faithful to Italian phonology (for the most part a bijection of sounds to letter combinations, i.e phonemes to graphemes), making the subject rather simple. In linguistic jargon, this means Italian has a \emph{shallow orthography}.

Italian is written by means of an alphabet, specifically the Latin alphabet. This book aims to explain how Italian is written and how Italian orthography corresponds to Italian phonetics.



\section{Alfabeto}
Aa	/a/
Bb	/b/
Cc	/k/,/tʃ/
Dd	/d/
Ee	/e/,/ɛ/
Ff	/f/
Gg	/g/,/dʒ/
Hh	//	
Ii	/i/,/j/
Ll	/l/
Mm	/m/
Nn	/n/
Oo	/o/,/ɔ/
Pp	/p/
Qq	/k/
Rr	/r/
Ss	/s/,/z/
Tt	/t/
Uu	/u/,/w/
Vv	/v/
Zz	/ts/,/dz/	

Note the absense of J,K,W,X,Y; these are foreign characters not officially included within the Italian alphabet.
J was historically apart of the Italian alphabet, however its use in modern Italian is reduced to loan words and Italian municipalities. Notably, some Italian municipalities also contain the letter X due to Greek or French influence.

We will now focus on single letter analysis of various letters of the Italian alphabet (that is, without respoting to digraphs or diphthongs).


abcdefghilmnopqrstuvz


\section{Silent 'H'}
Other than in digraphs, 'h' only appears in conugations of 'avere'. It has no phonetic value.

\section{Voiced and voiceless 'S'}
\section{Voiced and voiceless 'Z'}

\chapter{Diacritics (Segni diacritici)}
Diacritics indicate stress and are usually for final letters of a word

Italian employs only 2 types of diacritics that can only be applied to vowels
\section{Accento acuto}
\section{Accento grave}


\chapter{Digraphs (Digrafi)}


sc
ch
gh
gl
gn


\section{Hard and soft 'C'}

ca
chi
cu
che
co


cia
ci	/tʃ/,/tʃi/
ciu
ce	/tʃe/,/tʃɛ/
cio

	
\section{Hard and soft 'G'}


ga
ghi
gu
ghe
go

gia
gi	/dʒ/,/dʒi/
giu
ge	/dʒe/,/dʒɛ/
gio


Exceptions
On the end of some words of Greek origin
Magia

\section{Diphthongs}



ia
iu
ie
io

uo
ua
ue
ui


\section{Other}

scia	//
sce	/ʃe/,/ʃɛ/
sci	/ʃ/,/ʃi/
scio	//
sciu	//

gn	//


glia	//
gli	//
gliu	//
glie	//
glio	//


\section{'C' an 'Q'}

'c' and 'q' are phonetically equivalent
reason for different usage is for stylistic reasons (eugraphics?)
q is only ever followed by u

\subsection{cuo and quo}
- frequency of 'cuo' and 'quo'

\subsection{Orthography of /kk/}

cc,cq,qc,qq all have the same phonetic value. We will study the frequency to infer patterns of these usages.

'qc' has no occurences in Italian, so we only study the remaining 3 cases.


\subsubsection{'qq'}
'qq' has only 9 occurences in Olivetti, 7 of which are etymologically related to the word 'quadro'. Soqquadro is perhaps the only relevant entry with 'qq'

\subsubsection{'cq'}
	- 'cq' is commonly found in passato remoto constructions, and words etymologically related to 'acqua','acquistare', or 'acquietare'. O

\subsubsection{'cc'}
By far the most commonly occuring of the 3.