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Posto che se non erro la grafia corretta sarebbe va be', in caso per qualche motivo lo si debba scrivere in questa forma gergale, l'accento andrebbe grave (vabbè) o acuto (vabbé)?

Charo
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o0'.
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3 Answers3

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This question is not simple to answer to. Indeed this term is the short form of "va bene" (that's ok), and is rarely used in written texts.

But if you really want to write it, I would choose among three different forms:

  1. vabbè which is how you pronounce it
  2. vabbe' which is the linguistical correct form, with the truncation of "ne"
  3. vabbeh which correctly represents the pronountiation (aspirated 'h' sound)

The first one is reported by the accademia della crusca here and here and by Dizionario di ortografia e grammatica

Daniele B
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  • Both links point to the same address, I guess you mis-pasted the first one. – o0'. Nov 06 '13 at 09:33
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    (riguardo alla lingua, ti indirizzo a questo post) – o0'. Nov 06 '13 at 09:44
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    I added another link (the original one I referred to. I left the additional one put by @Lohoris. – Daniele B Nov 06 '13 at 14:22
  • What do you mean by “mute h” in this context? – DaG Nov 06 '13 at 14:23
  • h is called also "mute consonant" because it is not pronounced. You could contribute to the site making a question like that. – Daniele B Nov 06 '13 at 14:24
  • IIRC “vabbe’” is a case of truncation, not elision (elision would be the loss of a single vowel, though still marked with an apostrophe) – Agos Nov 06 '13 at 15:28
  • right, I modify it – Daniele B Nov 07 '13 at 15:25
  • @Daniele B: I know what is meant by a mute consonant. I was wondering what it is that you mean. If “it is not pronounced”, how can it “correctly represent” something's pronunciation? We might as well write “hvahbbheh”, mightn't we? :-) – DaG Nov 07 '13 at 15:30
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    @DaG you're right, I was not explaining enough and probalby mixing up two different concepts. In this case indeed the h is NOT MUTE but it is intended to represent the 'aspirate sound' of h. I'll hence remove the reference to mute h in my answer. Thanks for the comment, it helped improving the answer! – Daniele B Nov 08 '13 at 11:03
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The online Treccani dictionary does not list an entry for this expression. It does list an entry for the word be' (which is an abbreviation of bene which according to this dictionary has apparently made it into standard Italian, and I have quoted the online reference below):

Be’

be’ ‹bè› (o beh) interiez. – Troncamento fam. di bene, usato, con il senso di «bene, ebbene», in frasi interrogative o di concessione: be’, che succede?; beh! ... fate voi.

Nevertheless, I wouldn't write "va be'", which is two words, because the b is pronounced as a double sound and since (1) in Italian double sounds only occur in the middle of words (they cannot occur at the beginning or at the end of a word like in other languages), and since, just as important, (2) the given word is part of nonstandard Italian, one can conclude that the best to write it as it is pronounced, ignoring everything else. Hence, IMHO, the most proper way to write this word is:

vabbè

Regards.

John Sonderson
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2

As pointed out by Daniele B., the correct spelling is vabbè -- which is the correct usage if you want to infer a (southern) dialectal inflection.

That said, if you want to simply use a gergal, yet dialect-transparent form, there exist three correct spellings:

  • va beh
  • va be'
  • va be

All are mentioned in this Accademia della Crusca thread.

Often seen, but incorrect, is the misspelled version

  • va bhe
Sklivvz
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