 italian orthography uses a variant of the latin alphabet consisting of 21 letters to write the italian language. ==alphabet== the base alphabet consists of 21 letters: five vowels (a, e, i, o u) and 16 consonants. the letters j, k, w, x and y are not part of the proper alphabet, and are used only for loanwords and foreign names (with very few exceptions, such as in the native names jesolo and bettino craxi). in addition, acute, grave and circumflex accents may be used to modify vowel letters. {| class="wikitable" |- !letter ! name ! ipa ! diacritics |- | a, a | a |  | Ã  |- | b, b | bi |  | style="background-color:#e0e0e0" | |- | c, c | ci |  or  | style="background-color:#e0e0e0" | |- | d, d | di |  | style="background-color:#e0e0e0" | |- | e, e | e |  or  | Ã¨, Ã© |- | f, f | effe |  | style="background-color:#e0e0e0" | |- | g, g | gi |  or  | style="background-color:#e0e0e0" | |- | h, h | acca | â silent | style="background-color:#e0e0e0" | |- | i, i | i |  or  | Ã¬, Ã­, Ã® |- | l, l | elle |  | style="background-color:#e0e0e0" | |- | m, m | emme |  | style="background-color:#e0e0e0" | |- | n, n | enne |  | style="background-color:#e0e0e0" | |- | o, o | o |  or  | Ã², Ã³ |- | p, p | pi |  | style="background-color:#e0e0e0" | |- | q, q | cu |  | style="background-color:#e0e0e0" | |- | r, r | erre |  | style="background-color:#e0e0e0" | |- | s, s | esse |  or  | style="background-color:#e0e0e0" | |- | t, t | ti |  | style="background-color:#e0e0e0" | |- | u, u | u |  or  | Ã¹, Ãº |- | v, v | vi or vu |  | style="background-color:#e0e0e0" | |- | z, z | zeta |  or  | style="background-color:#e0e0e0" | |- |} ==vowels== the italian alphabet has five vowel letters, . of those, only  represents one sound value while each of the others has two. in addition,  and  indicate a different pronunciation of a preceding  or  (see below). in stressed syllables,  represents both open  and close . similarly,  represents both open  and close  (see the italian phonology for further details on these sounds). there is typically no orthographic distin
Italian_language Language_orthographies Latin_alphabets