Because Italian is a phonetic language (it is spelled the way it sounds) there is no verb to spell in Italian. On the occasion that someone asks you come si scrive?: how is it written you can use the Italian phonetic alphabet (a.k.a Italian telephonic alphabet)
Unlike the NATO phonetic alphabet: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc., the Italian phonetic alphabet uses Italian cities as its basis. So while learning how to spell things more clearly in Italian, you can also pick up the names of significant (or sometimes less than significant: *cough cough* Domodossola) Italian cities:
I present the phonetic alphabet in the following video. Scroll further down the page to see the list of cities used:
| Letter | City | |
| a | Ancona | |
| b | Bologna | |
| c | Como | |
| d | Domodossola | |
| e | Empoli | |
| f | Firenze | |
| g | Genova | |
| h | hotel* | |
| i | Imola | |
| l | Livorno | |
| m | Milano | |
| n | Napoli | |
| o | Orvieto (or Otranto) | |
| p | Pisa | |
| q | quadro* | |
| r | Roma | |
| s | Siena (sometimes Salerno or Savona) | |
| t | Torino | |
| u | Udine | |
| v | Venezia | |
| z | zeta* (sometimes Zara) |
*NB: sometimes there is no corresponding city so another word is substituted.
For the foreign letters: j, k, w, x & y – one can simply use the Italian name for each letter. Those are presented above in the first page of this lesson.