Pronouncing GN in Italian... master this sound with a fun exercise!

"Gnomo, gnocchi, stagno, lasagne, cognome... oh mamma mia!"

Yes, even if in last week's post I talked about the fact that Italian is a phonetically spelled language I immediately have to warn you about a difficult exception... and I'm talking about the "gn" sound in Italian.

Why is this sound so complicated?

If we think of English we do have those letters together in many words... and trust me they are quite difficult also for us Italians to correctly pronounce... think of these words:

• pregnant (/ˈprɛɡnənt/)
• sign (/sʌɪn/)
• campaign (/kamˈpeɪn/)

You are actually pronouncing "GN" in 3 different ways! So it is quite normal for us Italians to not be able to pronounce them correctly and it is obviously hard for all English speakers to want to pronounce the "Italian gn" them in one of those 3 ways! Usually English speakers tend to pronounce the Italian "gn" like the English word "pregnant".

The best way to learn and to pronounce correctly the Italian "gn" sound is to listen to it as much as possible.

This is why I have specifically designed a dictation exercise in the video here above. Sit back... relax and listen carefully to the dictation... I suggest to first just listen to it... then try to write down each word that you hear with a "gn" in it! The more you listen the easier it will be for your brain to understand the sound! Trust me it works!

You can find the full text of the dictation in the link here below... so if you want to you can also read and listen!

Click here to download the text of the dictation on GN sounds

Let me know how it went!