Italian read exactly as written — with a northern mouth.

Spelling and grammar are the Italian you'd learn anywhere: every letter is said, the vowels stay pure, stress falls second-to-last. What's different is the sound around it — lighter double consonants, a buzzing s between vowels, a flatter melody — plus a Lombard dialect underneath and a handful of words (azione, riservazione, comandare) that Switzerland put in and Italy never had. Nine sounds cover almost everything on these cards.

Knowing what a letter sounds like isn't the same as being able to make it. These five are where English mouths actually go wrong: what to do, what to stop doing, and a native recording you can slow down and copy.

• Everything written is said. Nothing is silent, the final vowel least of all: grazie is three syllables, GRAH-tsee-eh. And the vowels stay pure — a e i o u are "ah eh ee oh oo", never sliding into a second sound the way English ones do.
• Stress sits second-to-last, unless an accent says otherwise. boc-ca-LI-no, ca-STA-gne, Bel-lin-ZO-na. When it lands on the final vowel instead, Italian prints the accent for you: caffè, menù, però.
• h is a switch, not a sound. It has no voice of its own; it exists to keep c and g hard in front of e and i. che is "keh", luganighe keeps its hard g, and ho — "I have" — is just "oh".
• The accent is northern, not Roman. Two moves make it: the doubled consonants are leaned on far more lightly than in Tuscany, and an s caught between two vowels comes out buzzed — cosa is "KOH-zah", scusi is "SKOO-zee". The melody runs flatter and more evenly too, which is why it sounds calmer than the Italian on television.
• The dialect is a second language, and the Italian has Swiss in it. Ticinese is Lombard rather than Italian, and it is what the valleys still speak among themselves — you'll hear it, you're not expected to answer it. Meanwhile the standard Italian on the signs has swallowed words from over the Gotthard: azione, riservazione, comandare, posteggio.

The rules nobody prints on the menu.

Your Italian rarely outs you. These do. Read once, and you'll move differently.

The plates and glasses worth going out of your way for — each with the name as you'd say it out loud.

Test the four channels.

Understanding Italian by ear, reading, recall, and your own mouth. Quick rounds — do them twice.