Where Does Italian Accent Come From?

Abstract

There is a widespread idea according to which the difficulty of pronouncing a foreign language lies in the production of sounds that do not occur in the learner’s native language. Without denying this kind of interference, this paper shows that the accent problem goes beyond that: in the case of Italian, command of different sounds is not a problem for acquisition of a good pronunciation by Brazilian students, because all the sounds of Italian also exist in Portuguese. Even double consonants occur in Portuguese, as shown by observed data. Nonetheless, there are still pronunciation problems and the Brazilian accent is easily detected. The problem, then, does not arise from the lack of command of the phones, and must have its origin in other factors. The hypothesis offered here considers that Brazilian accent is caused by two factors: (a) difference of the environments in which Italian and Portuguese sounds occur in each language; and (b) different phonological rules applying in the two languages. Besides, there are intonational differences, not considered here. In order to give the hypothesis due support, some considerations are made on the phonetic and phonological structures of Italian and Brazilian Portuguese.