Data, security and the network

The fifteenth entry is l’interfaccia, and its plural is the one piece of Italian spelling that cannot be settled by ear. Nouns ending in -cia and -gia whose i carries no stress all sound alike in the singular, and they part company in the plural according to the letter standing in front of the c or the g. If that letter is a consonant, the i goes: l’interfaccia gives le interfacce, la traccia gives le tracce, la provincia gives le province, la spiaggia gives le spiagge. If it is a vowel, the i stays: la camicia gives le camicie, la valigia gives le valigie, la ciliegia gives le ciliegie. English offers nothing to lean on here, because « interface » becomes « interfaces » and the stem is never touched at all; a reader arriving from it writes le interfaccie by analogy and is wrong for a reason no ear can catch. The rule is to look at the letter before the c, never at the sound.