Re: OT strummin' on the old banjo

on 9/9/07 1:54 AM, Douglas Koller at laokou@COMCAST.NET wrote:

> From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>
>
>> But I still wonder about words that end with something other than c or
>> g followed by an -io. :)
>
>
> principio, principii; inizio, inizii...
>
> Kou
According to my Italian grammar: you get -ii (pronounced /'ii/) when the /i/
of the stem is stressed (as in zio, zii); but otherwise it's usually spelled
with a single -i, though -ii exists as a more old-fashioned spelling (along
with the much rarer -î, -ij and -j!). It's not 100% clear, but it seems to
say that however it's written, the pronunciation there is /i/. /ji/ is
explicitly ruled out, and the possibility of doubly unstressed /ii/ is not
even mentioned.

(And this is only for -io, of course. For -ia and -ie there are some other
factors involved).

Josh