The Florentine dialect or vernacular (dialetto fiorentino or vernacolo fiorentino) is a variety of Tuscan, a Romance language spoken in the Italian city of Florence and its immediate surroundings.
A received pedagogical variant derived from it historically, once called la pronuncia fiorentina emendata (literally, 'the amended Florentine pronunciation'), was officially prescribed as the national language of the Kingdom of Italy, when it was established in 1861. It is the most widely spoken of the Tuscan dialects.[1]
Perhaps the difference most noticed by Italians and foreigners alike is known as the gorgia toscana (literally 'Tuscan throat'), a consonant-weakening rule widespread in Tuscany in which the voiceless plosive phonemes /k/, /t/, /p/ are pronounced between vowels as fricatives[h], [θ], [ɸ] respectively. The sequence /lakasa/la casa 'the house', for example, is pronounced [laˈhaːsa], and /buko/buco 'hole' is realized as [ˈbuːho]. Preceded by a pause or a consonant, /k/ is produced as [k] (as in the word casa alone or in the phrase in casa). Similar alternations obtain for /t/ → [t],[θ] and /p/ → [p],[ɸ].
Strengthening to a geminate consonant occurs when the preceding word triggers syntactic doubling (raddoppiamento fonosintattico) so the initial consonant /p/ of pipa 'pipe (for smoking)' has three phonetic forms: [p] in [ˈpiːɸa] spoken as a single word or following a consonant, [ɸ] if preceded by a vowel as in [laɸiːɸa]la pipa 'the pipe' and [pp] (also transcribed [pː]) in [trepˈpiːɸe]tre pipe 'three pipes'.
Parallel alternations of the affricates /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ are also typical of Florentine but by no means confined to it or even to Tuscan. The word gelato is pronounced with [dʒ] following a pause or a consonant, [ʒ] following a vowel and [ddʒ] if raddoppiamento applies ([dʒeˈlaːθo], [undʒeˈlaːθo]un gelato, [ˈkwattroʒeˈlaːθi]quattro gelati, [ˈtreddʒeˈlaːθi]tre gelati. Similarly, the initial consonant of /ˈtʃena/cena 'dinner' has three phonetic forms, [tʃ], [ʃ] and [ttʃ]. In both cases, the weakest variant appears between vowels ([reˈʒoːne]regione 'region', [ˈkwattroʒeˈlaːθi]quattro gelati; [laˈʃeːna]la cena, [ˈbaːʃo]bacio 'kiss').