THE SECRET TO SAY THE SOUND “GLI” IN ITALIAN

WHY “GLI” IS HARD TO SAY 

The sound “GLI” in Italian is generally one of the trickiest ones for foreign speakers (and sometimes also for native ones!).

Why?

Well, first of all because this sound doesn’t exist in English and hence you’re not used to it.

On top of that, its pronunciation can be soft or hard and there are no rules to determine when. 

Also, the way you say “GLI” is very close to another Italian sound, LI, and sometimes this can cause some confusion. 

Anyway, you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

In fact, today I’ll show you a little secret to pronounce the “GLI” in Italian with no more mistakes! 

But let’s take a step back and see first the difference between the soft and hard “GLI”.

HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE “GLI” (IN ITALIAN)

In general, you can pronounce “GLI” in Italian in two ways: a soft or a hard way.

The majority of the words will get the soft sound, but it’s good you know that both exist (just in case).

Let’s focus first on the soft sound that is the most popular one. 

PRONUNCIATION OF “GLI” (SOFT SOUND)

As mentioned before, in most of the cases, when you find the “GLI”, you say it with a soft sound.

Listen to the audio below to see how to pronounce it.

But what’s the secret to make this sound?

Here you go … 

To pronounce the “GLI” correctly, you need to follow these 3 simple steps:

1. pretend you’re making an L 
2. then push the top of your tongue against your palate
3. let the air come out from the sides of your tongue

Easy right? 

Try to do it a couple of times and you’ll see that’s not hard at all!

EXAMPLES OF WORDS WITH THE SOFT “GLI”

The soft “GLI” is pretty common in Italian and you’ll find words with this sound quite often.

So listen and practice as much as you can to familiarize with this sound.

Here you have some examples where you say the “GLI” with a soft sound.

1. GLI (plural of the masculine article, with meaning of “the“)
2. CONIGLIO (rabbit)
3. BOTTIGLIA (bottle)
4. FAMIGLIA (family)
5. FIGLIO/FIGLIA (son/daughter)

HOW TO SAY “GLI” WHEN IT GETS A HARD SOUND

The hard “GLI” is certanly easier to pronounce and also definitely less popular in Italian.

However it’s still good that you know it, just in case you find it.

To make this sound you need to pronounce the letters G-L-I separately: listen below how the hard sound it looks like.

EXAMPLES OF WORDS WITH HARD “GLI”

Some examples of this sound are:

1. NEGLIGENZA (negligence/carelessness)
2. GLICEMIA (glycemia)
3. ANGLICANO (Anglican)

As you can see they are not very common words, so don’t worry too much for now.

IN ITALIAN, WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN “GLI” AND “LI”?

Now you know that you can say “GLI” in Italian in a soft or a hard way.

However, there’s another common sound in Italian that’s very close to the “GLI” … which one?

It’s the sound “LI”.

In fact, when speaking fast, you can hardly hear the letter G in the soft “GLI”.

And this can cause some confusion, in particular, if you don’t know that word.

But if there’s not a big difference in the way you say “GLI” and “LI”, how do you recognize them?

Sadly, there’s no really a rule that tells you when it’s one or the other.

Anyway, generally, you can find “LI” at the beginning of a word or in names that come from Latin.

The more words you know the easier will become to recognize this sound.

ITALIAN WORDS WITH THE SOUND “LI”

Here you are some examples of Italian words with the sound “LI”:

1. OLIO (oil)
2. ESILIO (exile)
3. EMILIO (Italian name)
4. SICILIA (Italian region)
5. VIGILIA (eve)

CONCLUSION

In this lesson, you’ve learnt that you can say the sound “GLI” in Italian in two different ways:

1. SOFT – it’s the most popular and you find it in words like: “gli”, “famiglia”, “figlia”, …
2. HARD – it’s pretty rare and some examples are the words “negligenza” or “glicemia”.

So the soft sound is definitely more common than the hard sound.

Also, watch out the words with the sound “LI”.

In fact this sound is pretty similar to “GLI” and you can get confused especially if someone’s talking fast.

Believe it or not, the difference sometimes is hard to get even for native speakers! 

Want to improve your Italian Pronunciation? 

If you’d like to know more about Italian pronunciation and challenging sounds, you can also refer to the following resources.

1. The sound GN in Italian: are you say it right?

2. The ITALIAN ALPHABET: learn how to spell your own name

3. Basic rules to pronounce almost every word in Italian