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Thursday, March 25, 2010

Music Dictionary: How to pronounce Italian Music Terms


This year my girl will be sitting for her Grade 2 music theory exam. Her teacher gave her a list of Italian music terms to memorize. Learning a word without knowing how it is pronounced makes it difficult to remember. So we found this site to help us with the pronouciation of the Italian Music Terms.

It is a Music Dictionary site. You may choose any letter of the alphabet listed at the bottom of the home page. Clicking on the alphabet you want will give you a list of all the terms starting with that alphabet in a panel on the left. For example, if you click "A", you will get musical terms like Adagio, Allegretto, Andante, Andantino etc listed on the left panel.

If you want to look up "Adagio", clicking on the word will give you its definition plus an audio of how it should be pronounced plus the spelling as we know it in English terms (Ah-DAH-jio).

This is great for learners. However, I must make sure that my girl does not mispell the words. If she pronounces it the wrong way, it would probably be easier for her to memorize the spelling. For example Dal segno is pronounced (dahl SAI-n(y)oe). For this pronouciation, she may spell the word as "dalsenyo". If she pronounced it "dal sag no", she will probably get the correct spelling for dal segno.

I find that learning music theory is no easy task for a 7-8 year old child.

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