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Italian -- how to pronounce "gli" | ||
Tags: Pronunciation | Italian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| mike789 Newbie United States Joined 6326 days ago 39 posts - 51 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 4 12 June 2009 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have trouble pronouncing this correctly. I've searched the forum and didn't find a similar question. I've seen explanations elsewhere but they don't seem to really work. Is it possible to describe how to produce the sound correctly.
Maybe its just one of those sounds that's really difficult to learn, but then I always thought the french "u" sound was the same way until I found an explanation on the about.com site that works perfectly. Its says 1. Open your mouth. 2. Say O. 3. Draw out the O until your lips are where they would be to make a W sound. 4. Purse your lips as tightly as you can. 5. Keeping your lips pursed, say E. 6. Voilà the French U! What I'm hoping is that someone has a description with a similar level of detail for how to say "gli" in Italian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6438 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 4 12 June 2009 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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First: seriously think of learning the basics of phonetics and IPA; it'll make your life much easier when descriptions like this don't exist.
Second: on the technical side, see Wikipedia on lateral consonants and palatal lateral approximants. The first page explains the English l sound (it has two varieties, one which is too far forward for Italian, and the other one which is too far back), while the second page talks about the sound in Italian. Here's an attempt at a short version of what you need to do, with respect to English. Basically, you need to make a tongue shape sort of like the l in 'lady' (so, the middle of your tongue (I mean the middle as in 'not the sides', not 'not the front') needs to be touching the top of your mouth, so that air can escape over the sides of your tongue. It's not as complicated as it may sound; you do it every time you make an l. Now, the key thing is to make this tongue shape in the right place. Instead of making it a little bit behind your teeth, you need to have the tongue/roof of mouth contact be on the 'hard palate' of your mouth - the area a little bit behind the bump behind your teeth (the bump is called your alveolar ridge), where the roof of your mouth is fairly hard. You can make the sound by forming an 'l' for 'lady' and moving your tongue back to the right area, or just by forming the tongue position there to begin with. I hope this helps. Edit: If you try moving your tongue back, bear in mind that you also need to use a somewhat further back part of your tongue to make the sound correctly - more the front of the middle than the middle of the front, if that makes sense. Basically, it's the more comfortable tongue position - your tongue would feel really bunched up if you only moved the tongue back against the roof of your mouth while using exactly the same part of it as you do for the English l for the contact, and really stretched out if you used the Italian contact position for the English one. Edited by Volte on 12 June 2009 at 10:05pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Dario8015 Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6000 days ago 37 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Russian, Swedish | Message 3 of 4 13 June 2009 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | ||
Here is an old post of mine on this very subject. It's not really a difficult sound to produce - you will physically feel it when you've got it right:
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6438 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 4 13 June 2009 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dario8015's description is better than mine; use it.
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