Do you know who comes to mind when I think about perfect Italian pronunciation?

Hint: It’s not an Italian person!

A few years ago, I was randomly watching TV when I listened to an interview by Kasia Smutniak, a Polish actress who has been working in Italy for years. I was absolutely stunned by her Italian accent and the manner in which she was pronouncing Italian words.

She spoke better Italian than I did! 

I mean she was speaking perfectly in crystal clear standard Italian on live television. 

Is that even possible? Yes, it is and here’s how you can get a near native Italian accent. 

Keep one thing in mind, it has less to do with your training and more to do with your attitude. 

1. Attitude Over Accent

When I was in school, I spent two long years struggling with pronunciation in English. My efforts seemed futile until Susan, my amazing American tutor, arrived. My English improved dramatically with Susan.

One day, the English teacher at my school (in Rome) asked me something in English, and I replied with a newly-developed “nasal sounding” American accent. Basically, it was my attempt to mimic the American accent from the movies I had watched as part of my “homework” with Susan. 

Both the teacher and my schoolmates were stunned at first—“Wow, parla inglese così bene!”—but the surprise quickly turned into some sort of disdain and discomfort. They started mocking me for my accent. To them, it sounded weird, nasally and a far cry from the Italian version of Luca. 

Stephen Krashen, in his article “Conjecture on Accent in Second Language Acquisition,” claims that our ability to imitate other dialects of our first language, as well as foreign accents, given sufficient input, is considerable. However, we often don't because we would feel uncomfortable doing so. The output filter holds us back. Despite being mocked at first, my will to sound, act, and be American prevailed.

I realized this only later, but in order to sound native, you first need to approach it with your heart, not solely through your ears. Above all else, I really wanted to sound like an American!

What Can YOU Do?

Do you want to sound more Italiano/a with a native-like Italian accent? You need to want to sound, act, and be Italian. Soak it all in by watching a lot of Italian content (with English subtitles) no matter your level. Pay attention to the sounds but also to how Italians act, react, and gesticulate.

2. Start from the Get-Go

In 2015, I was working with an Indian student of mine. He really wanted to sound like an American. In fact, he had been living in the US for 20 years but had a very thick Indian accent. We tried many different methods, but the amount of accent reduction we achieved wasn’t noteworthy. Ultimately, achieving an American accent with this student proved to be very difficult. 

The brain is amazing at learning, but it finds it difficult to undo and unlearn things and then relearn them in a different way. This is even more true when it comes to learning the sounds of any language. It’s best to tackle pronunciation from the very beginning because the more the wrong patterns that are ingrained into your brain, the worse this cumbersome accent issue gets.

What Can YOU Do?

Bad news and good news.

If you have been learning Italian for years and you’re still wondering how to get an Italian accent, it’s going to be extremely difficult to attain a better accent. Then again, if you really want it, it’s worth giving it a shot because anything is better than Sean Connery’s Spanish accent (aka lack of one) in Highlander or his Russian accent (again, lack of one) in The Hunt for Red October.

The good news? If you have been learning Italian for a few months, you have ample time to get your Italian pronunciation sounding up to par! It’s much easier to adapt and change your accent at the earlier stages than it is in the latter stages, so take action immediately to ensure you’re pronouncing Italian words correctly. 

3. Listen to a LOT of Italian

In July 2017, I sat down with an American student of mine (we’ll call her Stacey). She had been learning Italian for two years and she was despondent. Two years and two major problems were bugging her: she couldn’t understand native level content (even with Italian subtitles) and her Italian pronunciation was far from perfect.

“Why?!” she asked me. 

For the first dilemma, I asked her how much time she had spent listening to spoken Italian, and it turned out she had spent most of her time reading texts, doing grammar exercises, and speaking with her tutor—not much listening. 

Your brain needs a massive amount of comprehensible audio samples, spread out over a long period. This might sound obvious, but it is not obvious at all: if you want to improve your Italian pronunciation, you have to listen to the language as much as you can. 

In fact, even if you don’t realize it, your brain keeps working in the background, absorbing, subconsciously “acquiring” the sound pattern of a language. Nowadays, this is the easiest thing you can do because you can use a deluge of different resources, no matter if you are a beginner, an intermediate learner, or advanced student. The inexperienced language learner spends half, if not ¾, of their daily time slot doing stuff like toying with Duolingo for learning grammar. 

Your time is precious! 

Flip the script, listen first and do all of those “exercises” later! You will kill two birds with one stone, because you will improve your listening comprehension and your Italian pronunciation.

What Can YOU Do? 

Make a plan to listen to Italian for at least 30 minutes a day. If you can listen for 45 minutes or even 1-2 hours, even better. The more the merrier! 

If you are a beginner, I highly recommend you read and listen at the same time to short dialogues within language learning resources like LingQ. If you’re at an  intermediate level, podcasts, continuing with LingQ and watching short videos on LingoPie are the way to go!

4. Start from Intonation, Not from Pronunciation

When I told Stacey about the idea of listening to massive amounts of Italian, she immediately liked it. However, she also wondered how to do it more accurately. Should she listen actively or passively? I told her that the first thing to do is to focus on how sentences sound overall, instead of focusing on the single components.

Intonation is about how the pitch (tone of your voice) fluctuates along a sentence. For example:

"Ho deciso di imparare l’italiano" – The pitch falls abruptly on the last word, and in particular on “lia” of italiano.

"Ho deciso di imparare l’italiano" – In the next sentence: "Ho deciso di imparare l’italiano e sono contentissimo!" – The pitch actually rises at the end of italiano, with a brief pause, and then it falls again on “contentissimo,” and in particular on “ti.”

Intonation is at the heart of the sound structure of any language, and we learn it by paying attention to how each sentence sounds. We acquire the sound structure of a language by listening to its macro features first—that is, how natives utter entire sentences (like a kid does), NOT single words. 

We do it backwards!

 Start with listening to how entire sentences sound, don’t mind the minutiae (like how to pronounce single words or single letters). The more you listen and focus on sentences, the easier it will get!

What Can YOU Do?

Take short texts and focus on how sentences sound. Does the pitch (tone of your voice) go up and down? Where? Note it down (by hand) and repeat it out loud.  You will see that is one the simplest ways to get an Italian accent down! 

5. Chunk! (Simplify)

The next step was to teach Stacey how to make things simple for her.

“Luca, I get it, I like focusing on sentences, but they sound like a mumble jumble of words!” 

Everything is made of simpler pieces, and if you manage to break any complex piece of information into easier parts, they are easier to understand, digest, and reproduce. This, obviously, also applies to the sound structure of any language. 

I told her to tell me a random series of numbers and to break them down in pairs: 0658677146 becomes 06 58 67 71 46. You remember them better, you see?

"Ho deciso di imparare l’italiano" – One piece.

"Ho deciso di imparare l’italiano / e sono contentissimo!" – Two simpler pieces of information separated by the conjunction “e.” Easier to digest and read out loud!

Take these simple sentences and break them down:

- "Ho preparato la cena, e tu hai apparecchiato la tavola." (English: I prepared dinner, and you set the table.)

- "Volevo andare al parco, ma ha iniziato a piovere." (English: I wanted to go to the park, but it started to rain.)

- "Non sono uscito, perché dovevo finire i compiti." (English: I didn't go out because I had to finish my homework.)

- "Malgrado la pioggia, siamo andati a fare una passeggiata." (English: Despite the rain, we went for a walk.)

- "Ho studiato tutta la notte, però non mi sento pronto per l'esame." (English: I studied all night, but I don't feel ready for the exam.)

How would you break them down? If you don’t want to see the solutions yet, please don’t scroll down immediately.. 

 Take a moment to try them on your own! 

WARNING! 

Solutions below: 

- "Ho preparato la cena,/ e tu hai apparecchiato la tavola."

- "Volevo andare al parco,/ ma ha iniziato a piovere."

- "Non sono uscito,/ perché dovevo finire i compiti."

- "Malgrado la pioggia,/ siamo andati a fare una passeggiata."

- "Ho studiato tutta la notte,/ però non mi sento pronto per l'esame."

Any piece of language, any sentence, is made of simpler pieces. Use your ears, but also your eyes, hands, and a pencil or pen!

What Can YOU Do?

Get a short text in Italian with audio and break down the text into smaller chunks. It is incredibly useful and fun! You can check how this technique works (for any language) by checking our Speak Easy course, because that’s one of our cornerstone methods for getting you to speak with confidence and clarity!

My Parting Thoughts

You can learn to speak any language with a great accent, but start with your heart—fall in love with the beautiful sound of Italian. Listen as much as possible, focus on sentences, and break them down while listening actively, and it will work wonders for you and your Italian pronunciation!

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