Relatore Chiar mo Prof. Graziano Serragiotto Correlatore

4.2. Consonants 
As it is possible to see in Figure 9 and Figure 10, in neutral Italian, the consonant system 
consists of 23 consonants, while in British English there are 24 consonants. Even though the phonetic 
interference concerning consonants might seem less problematic than the one concerning vowels, the 
consonants in the two languages have significantly different manners of articulation (Canepari, 2011). 
Figure 9: Neutral Italian consonants. Source: Canepari and Giovannelli, 2008: 55 

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Figure 10: British English consonants. Source: Jones, 2006: x 
As it is possible to see in Figure 11, if we also take into account Italian geminate forms, 
English and Italian consonant systems only share 40% of consonants (Browning, 2004).
Figure 11: Summary of structure of English and Italian consonant systems. Source: Browning, 2004: 
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Figure 12 shows the English phonemes (unshaded) that may cause problems for Italians 
according to Duguid (2001). 
Figure 12: English consonants. Source: Duguid, 2001: 75 
Regarding the main problems for Italians concerning English consonants, Duguid claims:
a)
“Italian /t/, /d/, /n/ are pronounced with the tongue against the teeth rather than the gum 
ridge (upper alveolar ridge); 

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b)
/
θ/and/ð/ are often pronounced as /t/ and /d/: tin for thin, and udder for other, etc. Over-
emphasising these sounds can lead to excessive effort on the learner's part, which can 
be more problematic than the original error; 
c)
there are various problems related to voicing, particularly with the contrast between 
/s/and /z/, which are positional variants in Italian. This gives rise to errors such as 
‘zmoke’ for smoke; and the devoicing of plural and third-person -s, in cases where 
English requires voicing. Students sometimes have difficulty in accurately perceiving 
initial voiced consonants (in words like big, dog) as voiced, because of the late onset 
of voicing in English; 
d)
there is no equivalent in Italian for the phoneme /ʒ/, and words like pleasure or 
occasion tend to be pronounced with /zj/ under the influence of the spelling; 
e)
/ŋ/ in Italian is a variant of /n/. English ng (as in singer) is often pronounced /ŋg/ by 
learners:/s ŋg/ for /s ŋ/; 
f)
there is no equivalent of /h/ in Italian, and students will either fail to pronounce it or 
over-compensate: `Hi 'ope 'e is' (hypercorrection); 
g)
in Italian final consonants are rare, and are usually found only in foreign loan words, 
e.g. bar, sport, etc. So final consonants in English may be given a following vowel, 
usually schwa: I went
ə to schoolə onə the busə; 
h)
learners from some regions may voice final unvoiced consonants: /aɪ wend om on də 
bæz/ for I went home on the bus; 
i)
initial w can cause problems: for example would may be perceived or pronounced 
as/uːd/or/huːd/”
(Duguid, 2001: 75-76). 
Concerning consonant clusters, she claims: “although Italian has many of the permissible 
consonant clusters of English (and some more besides), the language is less consonant-heavy than 
English. Words with more than one cluster (like understandable) prove particularly difficult. Final 
clusters often cause problems, especially those containing /
θ/ or /ð/, e.g. sixths, clothes” (Duguid, 
2001: 76). 

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