DOUBLE CONSONANTS


In linguistics, words that differ by one single sound (phoneme)

are called "minimal pairs"

Some consonants can indeed be "doubled": F  V  S  Z  M  N  L  R

All you have to do is hold them for a bit longer.

But what about "occlusive" such as P B T D C G Č Ğ

It's impossible to hold P B T D for a longer period of time.
In reality what happens is that we SHORTEN the vowel that precedes them.

Ex.: REPUBBLICA: there is no way to double the "B" in front of an "L".

What happens is that we SHORTEN the "U" in front of the "B" and we SIGNAL the shortening of the U doubling the BB.

Ask your teacher for a demonstration and pray that he/she isn't from the Venice area, where they don't know how to pronounce a double consonant if their lives depended on it.

m'ama  mamma

pala palla

cola colla

faro farro

fato fatto

nono nonno

sete sette

mole molle

caro carro

pena penna

fata fatta

tufo tuffo

calo callo

vene venne

pane panne