Phonetic Transcriptions for the New Dictionary of Italian Anglicisms

This paper describes the work that has been done concerning the phonetic transcriptions for the New Dictionary of Italian Anglicisms directed by Prof. Pulcini (University of Turin): the dictionary contains both transcriptions of how Italians pronounce anglicisms and of how the corresponding English words are pronounced by native speakers of English. We shall explain how different pronunciation variants were selected for inclusion in the dictionary and how the transcriptions of anglicisms had to be adapted to the phonology and phonetics of Italian. A discussion will follow about the effects caused by the juxtaposition of English and Italian transcriptions. In fact, because of the intereference of the two phonetic and phonological systems, traditional conventions were in some cases abandoned in favour of more accurate phonetic transcriptions: this has been done with the aim of illustrating the most remarkable differences between the pronunciation of the words by Italian and English speakers.