First steps with Italian pronunciation

Gee this was funny, imagine two people who don't speak Italian, brought up in mainly English speaking households, whose only real exposure to the Italian language has been from Hollywood depictions of mafia gangsters.

We were in hysterics trying to pronounce the words from the first practical exercise, la'lbergo, the hotel. We didn't realise the 'h' is silent so trying to get our tongues around 'Ha una cámera líbera?' just didn't work. When you hear an Italian speaker using this question it sounds so different. Eventually we managed to say this reasonably quickly and not revert back to pronouncing the 'h'.

The other thing that surprised us was the stress on different syllables. In English, or at least in Australasian English, camera is usually pronounced camra, whereas the Italian is kahmaira. A very different sound, but when you read the word the English pronunciation naturally comes out so you get this garbled Italian sentence with English sounding words.

No wonder Europeans get so frustrated with English speaking tourists who don't make an effort to speak their language properly. How could anyone understand that question if the speaker doesn't make more effort? Ah well, at least we had a laugh about it.