Can You Tell Southern and Northern Italians Apart? Accent Guide
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ส.ค. 2023
- Here is a concise introductory guide on how to recognise accents in Italian. Fast and easy.
Watch this video, and even if you don't understand a word of Italian you'll be able to understand if a person is from the North or from the South of Italy just by hearing them speak for a few seconds!
And ofcourse if you are a student of Italian you can improve your ability to understand Italian and even choose what pronunciation your want to base your Italian on!
If you like my content please consider supporting me on patreon :D
/ themetatron
A curiousity, Rome follows the southern rule as far as the "s" is concerned, but it has an interesting phenomenon of removing doubles even when they are written, which only happens there ;) You don't say :D
The one man was hilariously southern obviously hahaha
0:27 haha yup. Knew it before listening to any of the advice.
@@Mode-Selektor Same 😅.
I know nothing about Italian, but my family came from Sicily, and I knew it two words in
There are dialects where a person as soon as he opens his mouth you can immediately say what dialect it is, what area he is from, what region he is from. Of course, this applies to us Italians. For a foreigner to identify a dialect with precision, in general is more difficult. But even vice versa, I as an Italian, for example, could not guess which area of the United States an American comes from by hearing his accent.
PS: Of course then living in a foreign country for a while you also learn to recognize the dialects. For example, I live many years here in Germany and today I can tell which region of Germany a person is from.
@@aris1956 Yes. Though, with Americans, even I, as a native Finn, who has never been anywhere close to America (the closest was a day in Stockholm, Sweden), can immediately recognize the Deep Southern accent; and the Boston accent, I hear, lacks the ”R”, in many places; so, it’s very non-rhotic. The Southern accent, by the way, has a very similar sound to the Tamperean dialect/accent, both pronouncing their vowels very strongly, and sounding very ”open” and kind of ”nasal”. So, if I were to translate, say ”Tuntematon Sotilas” (”The Unknown Soldier”) into English, I would definitely have Yrjö Lahtinen (with his distinct Tamperean accent) speak, in the Southern accent, in American English.
Me, an italian feeling accomplished because I can recognise my own language accent
Yes , fun fact though the interviewer in Number 2 was clearly Roman why those answering seemed neapolitans to me
The Italian pizza guy was so obviously southern and the professor was so obviously northern 😂
🤣🤣🤣
Fun fact: a way to recognize if someone is from northern or southern Italy is to do the "Inganno della cadrega" (the trick of the chair). You invite your guest inside your house and ask him to take a "cadrega". Cadrega means chair in the northern dialects so if your speaker doesn't understand, he/she is probably from central or southern Italy :)
vabbè dai è talmente famoso che devi prima chiedere se conoscono aldo giovanni e giacomo hahahaha
@@russko118😂😂😂
Jokes on you, doesn't work on Sardinians because we say "cadrega" too lol
Aldo Giovanni e Giacomo mitici, però
Ma ovviamente questo vale anche viceversa, usando un termine dialettale, del sud Italia, di una determinata cosa.
bah la cadrega è solo dialetto milanese ,a bergamo brescia mantova etc etc nn la chiamano cosi.
After the explanation about the S versus Z sound distinction, I got nearly all of them right upon a second listen...nearly. I didn't count the last guy because the clip was way too short for me to really make a decision on it. On that note, I don't speak a lick of Italian but as a Spanish speaker it's always fascinating to listen to, since certain words just jump out and smack you right in the face with familiarity.
Yep, me too. Spanish speaker. Never a vocalized z
There was only one I didn't get right 👏🏻
It's easy for me despite not being fluent in Italian. My family immigrated from the Veneto so I just compare what they sound like in the video to how my old relatives used to talk among themselves.
Living in Veneto for a few month it helped me to distinguish by the way they speak. North, generally, in my view, is more reserved and speak flat. Like the guy 5.
Not a native, but I recognised Neapolitan by the end vowels. For me it sounds very distinctively
You mean when they actually pronounce their end vowels? 😅
To my English speaking ears, S. Italian dialects seem to have a more "stretched out" character, whereas the N. Italian dialects seem to be a bit quicker, and have a kind of rapid fire cadence. Oh and No. 3, was so clearly Southern Italian. The general vibe of the guy was such that you could imagine him running a restaurant and speaking English with the same general rhythm and feel.
Northerners have this rapid fire feel because we're always in a hurry. Time is money! 😂
I got them all correct the second time around. Very interesting. Grazie. Thank you for that. I learned something new.
3rd guy looked as southernmost as can be, at first glance, even without knowing the tips.
Woo 100%! They became surprisingly distinctive after your explanation, even though I've never formally learnt Italian.
I went into it knowing only that most Italian Americans came from southern Italian immigrants and mafia tends to be southern Italian, so assumed all the ones who sound like Italian stereotype in media were south and the ones that sound different are north. I got all of there right except for the 2nd last which I didnt get wrong I just couldnt tell which group it fit into. Almost like they were northernized southerners or something.
Growing up speaking Sicilian then learning Italian in school, I've always noticed the difference in accents between North and South when visiting Italy. In the south, the vowel sounds are more drawn out while in the north their speach is more clipped and precise and definitely there is the strong double consonant sound in the south.
I've also noticed in certain areas of the north their "r" sounds more French than the more typical rolling r sounds in the south.
7/7 ✅🎯. Pretty easy; especially, after the revision of the typical features of each accent group.
I'm italian and I'm from North. I made a mistake, I thought n.1 was from south, because he had a strange way to pronounce letter "e" and had a strange intonation. Perhaps his way of speeking is influenced somehow by southern speak.
I thought it was just me! His accent was definitely kind of ambiguous. I'm thinking there probably is some particular story behind it.
You are an awesome teacher! I got them right.
How fun! My mother is from Trieste and my father Pozzallo. (I am first generation American) They have poked fun at eachother for as long as I can remember. They are married little over 40 years now.
Only realized you had this channel a few minutes ago. Will make sure to sub on my way out!
Edit:
First listen around I chose Northern for what sounded like my mom, Southern for my father and Central so anything sounding not quite exactly like either.
Thank you for teaching me how to verbalize what my ears were picking up❤
Edit#2 : Speaker #3 I put as "central" , otherwise I got it! I plan to go back and listen again to see what exactly was throwing me off🤔
”Central” was not an option, though. It reminds me of, how my former classmates would answer, on Swedish classes, when asked, which noun class a word belongs to (”en” or ”ett”); they would answer: ”The middle one.”. 😅
@PC_Simo I did it first time they were on screen before he announced the "rules".
Since I know Rome has a distinct sound, I figured that would have been thrown in there.
@@juliannacolombo5584 Okays 👌🏻.
@juliannacolombo5584, “before he announced the rules”??
The proposition of chose either Northern or Southern is in the video title and the video thumbnail.
@@brawndothethirstmutilator9848 True; I didn’t even think about that, but it *_IS_* true, haha 😅!
Wow! This is a great lesson! Thanks’
This is so cool, southern Italian sounds so much like spanish, well american spanish. Love this content!
Ciao Metatron, grazie! I really enjoy your videos, mate. Can you please do a video on the differences between Calabrese (da Caulonia) and Siciliano (your paese). Thanks so much for the great content.
thank you for this great video!
Do this more often Metatron!
ho avuto dubbio con il primo. interessante video
Southern Italian is much easier for us Spanish speakers to understand. The sibilant s is very common in Mexican Spanish and in Castilian Spanish. Ditto how southern Italians use more spanish words and use "malo/mala", "carnezerria", "disgraziato" and the like.
When it comes to the double consonants that southerners tend to do, us Spanish speakers are closer to Northern Italian.
I got 7 out of 7 correct, difficult at first, but not after your explanation!
I got all but 1 right at the beginning then for the second guess I got them all right
If you hear some "ü" and "oeu" is definitely a northerner
Metatron, any chance you might collab with David Gemello at some point? He's friends with your buddy Luke Ranieri and has a great channel. I'm sure we would all love to see you have a conversation with him.
I do not have sufficient rounding in the Italian language to be able to guess what geographical location in the Italian peninsula or up north in the mountains of the alps. I can follow along with a few phrases and words in Italian, and that’s it especially if you’re speaking slowly.
After your explanation I got all right 😱😱😱😱
Good video
Grazie pu lu video, so natu i crisciut a Londra (UK) ma nfamiglia amma semp parlat ndialett.. bello vure a differenz ri accenti e ke strann laccento ca tenini querri ru nord Ritalia!!
Number 3 doesn't really need an explanation 😂
It's not a speaking, but a vocalize instead. Despite of this, he nailed perfectly the issue
I got them all correct the 2nd go around
The napoletano accent is the best .
After your intro I was able to identify them. Is number 5 anywhere near Verona? I noticed people pronouncing the zz as a th there and to the south of that.
I'm mexican I speak italian, I have always thought that southern italians speak like a spanish speaker speakeing italian. Didn't kknow why I had that feeling, now I understand it is the pronunciation of the S.
Spaniards have a good italian, of course, but maybe due to being too close related, they can't nail the right pronunciation. And we can tell 100% if is an ispanophone. Southern italians, generally, can speak a purer italian than northerner.
Fun. I had them all correct.
I got it right. Secondly the old man had southern gestures no need to distinguish s and z sounds😂
I picked the old southern and the scarf guy. as south. I have no clue what they where saying. but it was more of a arabic tempo of it. it sounds a bit like they where almost angry.
So I'm bilingual and speak Italian at native level though i learned it second to English. (i speak with a northern accent)
I got 1 incorrect, that being the second one.
I actually didn't know the differences until watching, and didn't even recognize that people from the south don't pronounce the s and b sounds the same way but now it's very obvious.
Total guess:
1 - Northern
2- Southern
3- Definitely Southern, probably Sicilian, I mean look at the guy. Aaaa ho capi' 🤌
4-Northern
5-Northern
6-Cenral?
7-Southern
If I'm not wrong Liguria has their vowels all closed as well.
Wow, nice video! But it wasnt so clear to me at the beggining to pick up the differences (appart from the old funny guy kkkkk) then it got clearer after the explanation... Somehow I thought both accents would be much more different from each other, I still find it subtle
I heard a difference in pronouncing words with “ci” and “ce” sounds. Southerners often say “sci” and “sce” like when the Palermo man said “scibo” for “cibo”.
Not all southerners do. Palermo does but like Catania and Agrigento don’t. And that’s just within Sicily.
no one says scibo for cibo
@@shrektheswampless6102 listen again
... O.O... that's.... 7 / 7 in my first prediction.... O.O !!!!!!! (Though I wasn't looking at anything specific.... I was just remembering what Radio CiaoComo sounds and put that in north, and what Nino D'Angelo singing sounds and put that "aura" in the South. =P)
What about Scillian?
I'll be honest, I had to rely on the attire of the speakers lol.
Edit: I also noticed that one of the southern people pronounced 'ci' like 'shi' instead of 'chi' like in cheese. Should have been a dead giveaway, since there was one time I said Sicilia like I was from the North and my husband told me off 😅 (his Italian accent is essentially Sicilian).
The last one is so fast that I had to replay it four times, and it was still too quick for me to pick up on any sounds he made, let alone to understand words. 😅
Eh, s, z, it all sounds the same to me, unless it's very stressed as in the examples. I must have been at least 20 years old when I learned that there is a distinction between those two things in High German. And yes, I'm a native Swiss German speaker 😀No such thing in my Swiss German dialect.
Of course we learned about voiced S in English class, but I still can't really produce it well when speaking at normal speed... "th" is much easier to get right.
I tend to hear my Bergamasque s as a retracted one.
At the start I just guessed judging how Greek they look and I was surprisingly right in all accept 4.
Especially 3,I SWEAR I COULD FIND THE SAME GRANDPA HERE,oh when I saw that 0:30 I was 100% convinced
You could find him in the US as well in places with a heavy Italian American influence, too.
I'm a southerner. when I visited Greece it felt like I never left. my hometown is SAME as Athens but in a smaller way. it was like seeing a tree after seeing only bonsai all my life 🤣
first time I did okay not because I knew the z or s sound but the way they presented themselves seems like northern itlians present more like europeans at least in my american brains . second time after learning about the s and z got them all right
It's not about deciphering the notes correctly, but rather appreciating the music as a whole. Italy's dialects compose a symphony of 'zzz's and 'sss's, with Rome conducting.
0:25 libbberato
Poi, vogliamo parlare delle vocali ibride al sud, dove molte I e moltissime A diventano quasi delle E?
Is there a "posh" accent in Italian? English has a posh accent associated with upper class educated people, and the Parisian accent in French seems to be the desirable one in French. What would the "posh" accent be in Italian? Milan? Rome?
Italy loves the style of being "unstylish". I mean, posh accent would be seen more posh than desiderable. No real accent is the correct standard italian one. You have to study a lot, to nail it. But it would be the best of everything. The evolution of national language in Italy, was not a matter of assert dominance by some city on other, as it was in France or England. This has its negative aspects, but, about language, italian has been grown minding just beauty and poetry...
the difference is 20 decibels
😂😂😂😂😂
The ones from the south, no problemo..The ones from Milano..un po difficile perche Milanese accento. The man from Udine..I KNEW was from the north. I had spent time in Maiano (vicino Udine)
you should present also the Ligurian dialect (genoese language), it's pretty much weird and strange (alien!). I'm talking about the strict genoese language, not the italian spoken with genoa's accent.
Since Miriam Leone Giusy Buscemi Margareth Made and Stella Egitto are all sicilian I just based it on how they look
Just a learner (a lazy one, that is) of basic Italian here. I have noticed also (not in the video examples) that northerners like those from Milan pronounce words that are supposed to sound 'chi' as 'shi'. Words like cibo, cività, siciliano, and cinque.
And I don't know if it was just my ears that deceived me, but I swear I have heard people pronouncing an S followed by consonants as a 'Z'. Because I think I have once overheard someone saying "zviluppo"
I'm from Milan and I've never heard a native say "shibo".
It’s the other way around, we do it in the south. Specifically in my city Palermo. Other cities like catania or Agrigento they don’t do it. Milan is definitely NOT a city where that happens.
@@eldrstarsong4085We kind of do it in Palermo. Not exactly “scibbo” but the S does shift to an almost sc
If they sound like they are from the mafia, then Southern. The guy in the jeans coat sounds like that.
Tutte le belle persone sono del sud !!
Forza NAPOLI !! 🩵🤍🩵🤍
yay im so good, i got 100%
My dad's family is from a small town close to Naples, and they speak this "dialect" (I'm not sure what else to call it) where they don't finish the word and speak half the sentences, kind of a slang. It's kind of hard to understand my Nonno and my dad will have to translate sometimes.
In all of Italy but especially central and southern, everything that follows the tonic vowel (that is, the stressed vowel) is seen as somewhat superfluous, so there's a tendency to delete it.
My name, for example, "Aurelio" is pronounced "Aurè" by some people.
«io sono» [I am] becomes «i' sò'»
«sapere, fare, dire» [to know, to do, to say] become «sapè, fà, dì»
etc.
There's actually some precedent for this change in standard Italian. For example
«autorità» [authority] from the older «autoritate» (Compare to Spanish «autoridad» and Portuguese «autoridade».(
«città» from «cittade» (Compare to Spanish «ciudad» and Portuguese «cidade».)
Granted, in Neapolitan and its dialects, there is usually a strong tendency to delete final vowels too, which can seem like random deletion to untrained ears.
"Non posso più scordarmi di te» [I can't forget you anymore] in Neapolitan would be
«nun pozz(o) chiù scurdarme 'e te»
where the vowel at the end of «pozzo» is optionally deleted. If not deleted entirely, it gets reduced to a schwa sound not usually found in Italian but very frequent in English (think of every "a" sound in the word "banana" except the second one). It varies from speaker to speaker whether that final vowel is deleted or not, but both are acceptable. These two phenomenon probably contribute to the sense that they're speaking half sentences.
Take what I said with a grain of salt though, I'm not a native speaker of either language, just an enthusiast with linguistic training. :)
@@SpvrinnaeliThanks for sharing! I have only recently become interested in learning more about different accents though I have always LOVED them. My mother in Northern Italaian, my father Sicillian, I surely have a heavy NYC accent and my two cousins I speak mostly to one is in the southern US and the other Australian!
Cute story. I have a nice from Mid East Coast US, not a particularly distinctive accent..so I was reading to her (she was 6). She stops me and asks "Wait. Why do you keep doing that?" I asked what? She tells me "That is D_O_G. Not D_A_W_G". She had me in stitches. I explained regonial accents. Her response?😂..."So there are places where EVERYBODY just talks WRONG and it is OKAY?!? Why would you all do that?!? That makes NO SENSE".😂😂
I told her I have no idea of the right answer but lots of people have their own pronunciations and she might hurt their feelings if she calls them wrong..but it is okay to ask them about it in general. Just leave out the wrong part". 😂 ❤
@@juliannacolombo5584 🤣🤣🤣 hey, at least she has the excuse of being 6. Some adults still can't grapple with the idea of regional accents. It's hard for non-linguists to understand that orthography, i.e., the way we write, is derived from speech, and moreover a very specific dialect of speech (usually the one with the most social prestige), not the other way around. It was like pulling teeth trying to get my mother to understand that while in Naples, the people didn't speak "wrong" they just spoke a slightly different version of the language influenced in large part by their own distinct regional language. It'd be like a Spaniard traveling in Portugal and wondering why they all speak such a bizarre Spanish... because it isn't Spanish 😅
@Spvrinnaeli Who knows..being she is so young..perhaps it will spark a love of linguistics later on!
Fun tidbit to share since you mentioned Spanish.
I have friends from Puerto Rico , Dominican Republic and Mexico. English is the second language for them. The Mexican dialect is easy for my ears to distinguish. However both my Mexican and D.R. friends have many times said that Puerto Rican Spanish is very "butchered" or "weird".
Next day off..I think I am going to see who is free and help explain the examples of why!
Thanks for helping me reach a fun idea🤗
@@juliannacolombo5584 Caribbean Spanish is at the forefront of a lot of innovative linguistic features unique to that region! There's lambdicism (the conversion of syllable-final r to l), such as puerto > puelto, amor > amol, syllable-final s-aspiration (or deletion) such as estás aqui > ehta haqui / etta aqui, deletion of intervocalic d, especially in the past participle, so he ido > he io, has amado > has amao, lado > lao, etc. as well as a ton of unique vocabulary and intonation. This leads a lot of hispanics feel that the language is devolving in the caribbean but the existence of at least one of these changes are present in the majority of other variations of Spanish; Venezuela, Spain, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile all demonstrate s-aspirstion or deletion; Spain and Venezuela exhibit intervocalic d-deletion; southern Spain has a similar process to lambdicism called rhotacism where syllable-final l becomes r, such as alma > arma, sol > sor, etc. I would go as far to say that close to half of all hispanics natively have some kind of s-aspiration or deletion in their Spanish.
The two from Milan sounded kinda southernised, ngl
The first 2 I guessed correctly. The third and fourth I guessed incorrectly. The fifth sixth and seventh I guessed correctly.
Got one wrong, number 4.
I've never learned Italian (although I know Portuguese and Spanish so it's not completely foreign to my ears) I got all of them correct :D
I suck at language
The northern accents remind me of the Catalan accent👀
100% Evviva! :D
The older guy is definetly from The Godfather😂
*definitely, sorry😊
The first guy was speaking very fast and clear, but for "dice" he said "dishe" rather than "diche." My relatives in Rome say dishe; my relatives in Ancona say "diche." So that sounds Southern to me, but maybe it's pronounced that up north too.
Nobody in northern Italy would ever pronounce the c as a sh, it only happens in southern and parts of central Italy
I wonder if the “s” being pronounced as a “z” is because of Germanic influence. Northern Italy was under German rule for quite some time and that featured exists in many Germanic languages when there’s a singular s.
As a Portuguese I did not listen to your explanation at all. just tried to guess it and the result is as expected: 4 times right, 3 times wrong. The hilarious guy and the professor kind of guy were a dead give away I have to say. But I did not better than anyone else just guessing so I am not very good as it, as expected.
1 Nt,
2 Sh,
3 Nt,
5 Nt,
6 Sh,
Let check the video if I got it right!
1 - Correct
2 - Correct
3 - Wrong
5 - Correct
6 - Correct
4 and 7 I could not listen enought.
So 4 of 5.
The S/Z thing made it really easy. Also their general attitude (south seems to have more exaggerated mannerisms) when talking.
The only one I got wrong was #6.
That's easy the northern Italians do the hand signature 👌 while talking like a bapa bopa, goaba Venice. While them southern Italians are like it's a me Mario and I like the spaghetti and a meatball mama mia! 😂
Italian is really weird. I speak Finnish and the language has been almost the same for 2000 years. We have different dialects and with exposude, you can learn the dialect.We have a "made up" literary language that tries to be in the middle and that is what people use when speaking with outside of your dialect area.
What is weird about Italian? I found FInnish actually weird in that a sa Dutch person (or Portuguese) I could not understand a single word. Fortunately there was a lot written in Swedish which for a Dutch person makes a whole lot of sense. Finnish seems to be really good at making very long words, which is peculiar for people that seem to use so few of them in a conversation.
You can't really tell so, cause finnish had not a written form, nor an alphabet back then.
No language in the world, except in some isolated insular community, can stay still for 2000 years. Even more if it lacks of a written form that work as a nail to mantain old standards...
@@gabrieleguerrisi4335 Just compare proto finnic to modern Finnish. Estonian has changed more than Finnish, while Finnish has changed less
@@jopeteus find me a source of proto-finnic
For any Italian native this test is joke😂
The intonation is very different.
I'm still appalled that my English friends could not tell Italians and Spaniards apart while speaking English 😮😮😮
When I go to Italy I am going to say dove la mafia voglio unirmi alla mafia 😂😂
Don't do it
Easy. Northern italian sounds gay and southern "macho"... 😉