Accent and syllable tonic

When pronouncing a word, the tone of the voice falls on a particular syllable, called precisely tonic.

It is simply said that the accent “falls” on that syllable.

When to be accented is: 1) the last syllable is said that the word is “tronca” (eg città) 2) The penultimate syllable, the word is called “piana” (eg dovére) 3) the antepenultimate syllable, the word is called “sdrucciola” (eg sàltano) 4) the fourth-last syllable, we say “bisdrucciola” (eg fàbbricalo) 5) the fifth-last syllable, we say “trisdrucciola” (eg ìndicamelo).

For clarity in the examples we have accentuated the tonic syllable, but in the text the accent is mandatory only for the truncated words . For the others it is assumed that the accent is known, even if, as we shall see, the difficult words and the possibilities of misunderstanding are not uncommon.