The KàSO
English to Italian DICTIONARY

with a proposed
one-to-one relationship
of Italian graphemes (letters)
and phonemes (sounds)

by
ADOLPH CASO
BRANDEN BOOKS
Boston

© Copyright 2003
by Adolph Caso

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Caso, Adolph.
The Kàso English to Italian dictionary : with a proposed one-to-one
relationship of Italian graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds) / by
Adolph Caso.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8283-2082-9
1. English language—Dictionaries—Italian.
2. Italian language—Phonetic transcriptions.
I. Title.
PC1640.C325 2003
423’.51—dc21
2002155251

Branden Books
Division of Branden Publishing Company
PO Box 812094
Wellesley MA 02482

INTRODUCTION

On pronouncing Italian:

Unlike English, Italian is easy to read and to write because it has a virtual one-to-one relationship between the letters of the alphabet and their representative sounds. Once you know that /a/ is pro-nounced /a/ as in father, then, whenever you see it, you always pronounce it in the same way. The same rule applies to the other vowels. As for consonants, pronounce them as you would in English.
The Header above appears on every other page of the Dictionary. It contains a guide on how to pronounce the exceptions. A guide on how to pronounce vowels and consonants is on pages 8-9.

Soft /c/ is pronounced as the /ch/ in Chicago; thus, ci ce ca co cu (Cikago)
Hard /c/ is pronounced as the /k/ in Chicago; thus, ki ke ka ko ku (Cikago)
Soft /g/ is prounced as the /j/ in jasmine; thus, ji je ja jo ju (jasmine)
Hard /g/ is prounced as the /g/ in get; thus, gi ge ga go gu (get)

/sc/ is pronounced as the /sh/ in she; thus, shi she sha sho shu (shi)
/q/ takes the place of /gn/ as the /gn/ in gnocchi, or qocchi (qokki)
/y/ takes the place of /gl/ as the /gl/ in giglio (lily), or giyio (jiyo)
Note: /gn/ and /gl/ do not really have English equivalents.

For easy comparison, each line of the Dictionary contains four words: Standard English, stan-dard Italian, slightly modified English, and completely modified Italian. Each modified word contains one or more accents to help identify the stress. Try pronouncing a few words. You’ll master the whole Italian pronunciation in no time, and it will help with the English pronunciation.

Goal:
The immediate goal of this Dictionary is twofold: 1) Implement the last phase in establishing a one-to-one relationship between Italian phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (letters of the alpha-bet). 2) Implement the first phase in establishing a one-to-one relationship between English pho-nemes and graphemes, and make English easier to read, to spell and to pronounce (the word to spell does not really exist in Italian).

Usage:
This Dictionary can be used by anyone wishing to acquire or improve English and Italian lan-guage skills. It serves as a quick reference for standard spelling of English and Italian words, and offers suggestions on how to better grasp the pronunciation of the two languages. Because of the proposed changes, the Dictionary would also serve as a tool in developing better reading and writing skills, and would afford the reader to simultaneously look at lines of four words in their standard, translated and transcribed forms.

Observation:
To enable the English or non English-speaking readers to pronounce words, English dictionaries and vocabularies present first the accepted standard spelling of each word followed by a phonol-ogically transcribed spelling. The purpose of the latter is to give the readers a better chance on guessing the right pronunciation of a given word. The problem is that neither the standard spell-ing nor its transcription helps the reader in properly pronouncing the words. In fact, the transcrip-tions may hamper rather than guide one toward a proper pronunciation. The reason is two-fold: a) English phonology is chaotic; b) the standard words do not have accent marks. To make matters worse, the phonological transcriptions of the words are written with characters that only people with linguistic backgrounds can recognize or understand. Unfortunately, the best they can do is to guess on how to pronounce the very words they have transcribed.
Consider the nine phonological transcriptions of to ascertain as they appear in nine leading dictionaries of the English language, and, note that no two are rendered in the exact same manner.

/as'cr tªn/ /ª-sÇr-t¾n/ /ascr0 tªn/ /assert¾in/ /Fsc’ tein/
/as.sÅr.tªn'/ /as’cr tªn/ /1as-cr-0 tªn/ /as-er-tayn/

As you can see, there is no consensus regarding the transcriptions, and their convoluted pho-nological renditions really become superfluous and useless. If experts cannot agree on the tran-scriptions, how can children, young persons, and adults—including individuals from other coun-tries—how can they learn from transcriptions whose words are misrepresented? If, on the other hand, experts were to agree on the vowel(s) to receive the accent, this alone would make words easier to read and to pronounce. Because The Kàso Dictionary establishes consistency between phonemes and graphemes, and due to accents placed on each word, it could be used as a tool to help readers with their reading, spelling, and pronunciation.
In Italy, first grade students learn how to read, write and pronounce Italian in approximately two months into the year. In the English-speaking world, after two years of intensive instruction and exhaustive drills which begin in pre-school, students may not be able to pronounce let alone spell many words of the English language. We know their plight. Imagine what non English-speaking students in America and abroad have to go through trying to learn English.

When students fail to achieve artificially established proficiency levels, politicians and pun-dits easily place the blame on the teachers and on the schools. Consider, in addition, the plight of those having learning disabilities such as dyslexia—their task remains practically insurmountable. Placing blame on teachers neither reduces the plight of the children nor lessens the anxiety of their teachers. No matter how much scattered or concentrated teaching takes place, children will break the phonological codes only when their brain reaches the proper level of maturity. The rea-son is simple: because English is complex, it takes more time to master it. But, time may be lost unnecessarily simply because we may not be using better tools.
In The KàSO Dictionary, words are presented without transcriptions, and in two columns of two words each. This allows comparisons that help in the spelling and in the pronunciation of each word. In the first column, English words appear in their standard form; in the second col-umn, the words are modified to include the accented vowel receiving the stress, which helps with pronunciation. The only other change is that the letter /c/ (hard sound) is rendered into /k/, while the other /c/ (soft-silent) remains as it appears in words like such, Chicago, recipient, cycle, etc.

In the Dictionary, the infinitive to ascertain appears in two parts with its Italian counterpart, which makes for easy comparison for spelling, pronunciation and quick translation. The English is in bold; the Italian is in italics followed by specific codes whose explanations are found on page 11. The first column lists the words in their standard spelling, and the second column lists them in their modified spelling:

to ascertain accertare to ascertàin accertàre

How to use the Dictionary is explained further on. However, each odd numbered page in the Dictionary has a header containing the proposed changes, and can be used as a quick reference guide at a glance.

Long Range Goal:
The goal of this dictionary is to establish a one-to-one relationship between human-produced sounds (phonemes) and their representative letters (graphemes). By achieving this goal, we will facilitate a practical and consistent use of languages in this multi-faceted digital age. Imagine a single phonological system that can be incorporated in languages based on the Latin alphabet sys-tem and allowing those languages to retain their national characteristics. With a handful of changes, Italian will come close to being a perfect prototype and its system could be implemented to achieve the same results for the cousin-languages of Spanish and Portuguese, and for others with similar systems. Eventually, the system could be used with English and with other languages whose phonological systems vary greatly from the Latin system.

Phonological Considerations:
English phonology is erratic and has more exceptions than steadfast rules. In encountering the letter a, in English, we can pronounce it in about fifteen different ways; many times, it is not pronounced at all. In Italian, it is always pronounced, and in only one way, wherever it appears in words. English, therefore, remains inconsistent due to all the exceptions while Italian offers con-sistency with few exceptions. By proposing eight changes to the Italian system, we would achieve a virtual consistent relationship between sounds and symbols rendering the language digitally friendly with its graphemes and phonemes transferable to other languages. Instead of entering data with a keyboard, or by trained voice or other device, as a natural progression, individuals would be able to enter data by voice in the language of their choice.

Phonemic Dictionary:
Remember that graphemes (letters) become morphemes when intelligence is attached to one of them or to any number of them when used in groups to create different semantic meanings. This means that the letter /a/ is only a grapheme and carries no intelligence—no meaning. But the /a/ when it is used as the indefinite article a—when it appears in front of another word, it be-comes a morpheme because it carries intelligence and has a specific meaning.

The Dictionary, therefore, becomes phonemic in that it deals mainly with establishing an ex-act relationship between phonemes and graphemes thereby creating a new phonology, which could be applied to most other languages. The Dictionary does not necessarily deal with mor-phology and syntax, and neither offers definitions nor complete translations of specific words.

Vowels:
The vowels i e a o u exist in English as in Italian. Whereas in English they practically have no specific recurrent pronunciation patterns when appearing in words, in Italian each vowel main-tains the same prominent sound regardless of where it appears in words. In Italian, the a is cen-tral, in that it is pronounced at the center of the mouth. The e and the i are to the back, and o and u are to the front; thus, i e a o u. This can best be seen in English words that could also be Italian, except that Italians would pronounce them slightly different but with typical consistency:

· In the word Camaro (Kamàro, not camaro), Italians would pronounce the first and sec-ond /a/ in exactly the same way, and would continue to do so in exactly the same way re-gardless of where it would appear in other words. By pronouncing the /a/ in the same way wherever it appears in other words, you would also pronounce it correctly.

· In the word Malibu (not Maleebiu, as Americans would pronounce it), the a i and u are also clear, and the same rule as above applies.

· In the word to escort, the e and the o are also clear. By pronouncing them in the same way, wherever they appear in other words, you will have pronounced them correctly.

Practice pronouncing the vowels several times, and remember the position of where they are formed in your mouth. The u is to the extreme front with lips extended and semi-open; the i to the extreme back, almost close to the throat.

Note also the stress (accent)—that is, the vowel that receives the emphasis. In English, each word has at least one to two stresses; in Italian, each word has one stress, and it is always the vowel that receives it (in English, the y can also receive the accent). Thus, in Camàro, the second a receives the accent; in Malibù, the u receives it; and in to escòrt, the o receives it. By placing these accents on specific vowels in words, one is almost assured correct pronunciation.

As an aside, except for Swahili, Hawaiian and arguably Japanese, Italian uses more vowels in forming words than any other language. Vowels are voiced, meaning they are the product of measurable vibrations; consonants (while some are voiced) are for the most part voiceless, mean-ing they are the product of noises produced by strictures, which are not easily measurable.

Languages having these attributes, therefore, have certain advantages especially in com-puter\digital applications, and in lyrics set to music. Bèl kànto (beautiful singing) is used through-out the world, and its basic language is almost always Italian.

Consonants:
Italian and English consonants are the same.

The following are voiced: b d g j l m n v; the following are voiceless: c f h k p q s t y w x z.

In English, they are pronounced differently according to their positions in words, whether they begin or end words, or come before or after vowels, or after or before other consonants.
In Italian, consonants hardly ever come at the end of words. And, whether before or after vowels, they are almost always pronounced in the same way. Because of minor exceptions, Ital-ian falls short on general consistency.
The consonant c, for instance has three different pronunciations: as a c in ciao (soft), as a k in crescendo (hard), and as an h in crescendo (aspirated). The same can be said for g. Before the letters i and e, the c is pronounced soft; before a, o, and u, it is pronounced hard. In relation with other consonants in words, the c and g are pronounced hard. As for q, it is used with few words and before the u. The word acqua, therefore, can easily be written as akua (àkua) and is clearer and unmistakable. The c is silent in the standard spelling.

Two other consonants need revisions; they are the clusters gn as in gnocchi (dumplings) and gl as in figlio (son). The simpler solution is to use the grapheme q to replace the phoneme gn, and the grapheme y to replace the phoneme gl.

The total changes are eight:
1) c is always pronounced soft: ci ce ca co cu
2) c is always pronounced hard: ki ke ka ko ku
3) j is always pronounced soft: ji je ja jo ju
4) g is always pronounced hard: gi ge ga go gu
5) the c in sci and sce is replaced by the h: shi she sha sho shu
6) gn is replaced by q
7) gl is replaced by y
8) the accent marks on vowels are optional.

With the above changes, Italian would achieve the one-to-one relationship between the sounds and their corresponding letters, and could serve as a prototype to effect similar changes to Spanish, Portuguese, Rumanian, French, English, and others.

As for English, by implementing the changes related to just c and g could be the beginning of a needed major change to its orthography. In the Dictionary, we have already changed the hard c into k, leaving the c to be pronounced soft.

Conclusion:
In this era of digital communications, an alignment between graphemes and phonemes would present enormous advantages in that it would simplify applications and bring disparate language situations into more homogenous clusters. As a minimum, people of diverse languages would be better able to communicate on-line and throughout the world via the Internet and other networks.

Explanations on how to use the Dictionary:
In the Italian section, infinitives end only in are, ere, ire; no reflexive infinitive endings are included. Musical terms have no qualifications because they are spelled the same in English and in Italian. The Italian words translated from the English may have more than one form, but only one form has been arbitrarily chosen. For other forms and definitions, one would have to consult standard vocabularies or dictionaries.
The Italian words do not necessarily correspond to the English equivalent; in many instances, the translations are arbitrary, and the word is chosen from several possibilities. The Dictionary, though it has an extensive number of words, it does not contain all of the words of English or of Italian. However, new words will be added as needed, and suggestions from readers will be welcomed.

Accents on the transcribed English words may vary according to region and may not be ho-mogenous; accents on transcribed Italian words hardly vary. The accent on a vowel indicates that that vowel receives the stress. Look for it, and let it guide you to pronounce the word of your choice. Remember, words beginning with vowels that are capitalized, the capital letter contains the accent and the stress is received by that vowel, unless another vowel contains the accent and would therefore receive the stress.

In Italian, words have endings that are masculine, feminine, singular or plural.
In the Dictionary, the endings appear in Italics at the end of each word:

· o masculine singular
· i masculine/feminine plural
· a feminine singular
· e feminine singular or plural
· à feminine singular/plural
· few other words have irregular endings, especially foreign words

Abbreviations:
a adjective
ad adverb
art article
con conjunction
inter interjection
nf noun feminine
nm noun masculine
nmf noun masculine feminine
prep preposition
pron pronoun
super superlative

Click Here to use the Dictionary.