Script guide › Latin
How to recognize Italian
Italian is one of 35 languages in Grafle's Latin group. Here's what it looks like, where you'll see it on signs, and how to tell it apart from its lookalikes.
Spot it fast
- Nearly every word ends in a vowel; double consonants (zz, tt, ss) everywhere.
- Accents only fall on final vowels: città, è, però.
What Italian looks like
Tutti gli esseri umani nascono liberi ed eguali in dignità.
Ciao, come stai oggi?
Tra il dire e il fare c'è di mezzo il mare.
Latin scripts: The alphabet you're reading now. Each language gives itself away by its own special letters and accent marks.
Where you'll see it on signs
- Italy
- Switzerland
- San Marino
Easy to confuse with
- Spanish — Italian doubles consonants (tutti, mezzo) and ends nearly every word in a vowel; Spanish has ñ and ¿ ¡.
- French — French: accents é/è/ê, the ç, and apostrophes (l', c'est). Italian: doubled consonants and vowel endings.
- Romanian — Romanian looks Italian until you spot ă, ș and ț — the comma-below letters are Romanian-only.