Talk:Introduction to Italian/Lesson 2

Pronunciation of the letter 'a'

Sorry, this is my first time on Wikiversity, so I haven't read up on the etiquette of commenting but presume it's much the same as Wikipedia. Please let me know if I'm getting anything wrong here.

I just want to point out that an entirely incorrect pronunciation is being given for 'a' in this article. I can only guess that the contributor speaks some very non-standard dialect of English. I know of no English accent which pronounces the 'ou' in 'ought' or the 'a' in 'raw' in the same way as an Italian would pronounce the a's in Milano, parlare, l'albero etc. Perhaps they wouldn't be using precisely the same sound as we use in cannon, Marilyn or Wikipedia, but they would be using something much closer to that than the inexplicable pronunciation which is given here.

I don't want to change it myself because I'm not an expert on Italian pronunciation but would appreciate if someone else could have a look at it and sort it out. Liamcalling (discuss • contribs) 06:26, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

@Liamcalling: Welcome! Please be bold and improve the resource. I don't know that we have any experts in Italian pronunciation frequenting Wikiversity. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:51, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Dave. I just went ahead and did it. Anyone who feels strongly about it is welcome to give better examples, or to try to clarify the very small difference between the a sound in Standard Italian and most dialects of English (although such detail hasn't been gone into with the other vowels here, and probably would sit better on the Italian Phonology page of WP than on a beginners Italian course). However, I would argue the case if someone wanted to do a straight reversion to the previous edit. Ta for your encouragement. Liamcalling (discuss • contribs)