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  2.24 The 'z'

The letter z corresponds to 'ts' or 'ds' in English, in other words you have a voiceless 'ts' and a voiced version 'ds' of this sound. Being the 'd' a voiced consonant and 't' a voiceless one you can sometimes see this sound transcribed like that: /ds/ and /ts/. We already discussed the differences between voiced and voiceless sounds, see 2.18 voiced and voiceless s'. Pay attention to the different pronunciation of z in speranza and organizzare. In organizzare the z is pronounced stronger. We are going to talk about that problem, the double consonants, once again later.

voiceless
silenzio = silence
speranza = hope

voiced
Zona = zone
organizzare = organise







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