Since it is often pleasant to have a sense of the sound of foreign words included in a text, there follows a short guide to the pronunciation of Locorotondese dialect. Most readers who will wish to have such a sense will have some familiarity with Italian, and the book uses an orthography based upon that of standard Italian and French.

Consonants in Locorotondese have approximately the same values they have in the national language, although certain combinations (ng, or mb, for instance) can occur initially, without following a vowel. This is a characteristic of many southern dialects. The little used “j” of archaically spelled Italian has been adopted herein with its value close to the English “y” sound, as in “yes.”

Similarly, simple vowels in dialect have the same sounds, more or less, as those in Italian. Locorotondese, however, makes much use of the unaccented “schwa” sound. This has approximately the sound of the “e” in French “de” (of) and may occur alone, or combined with other vowels to produce a series of diphthongs which gives the dialect, particularly as spoken in the countryside, a characteristic sound. I have chosen to represent this schwa vowel with an unaccented “e”, and to use accent marks to indicate open and closed “e's”, according to the usages of French spelling.