so, sopra, sta, sto, su, te, tra, tre, tu, va, vo. Syntactic gemination is the normal native pronunciation in Central Italy (both "stress-induced" and "lexical") and Southern Italy (only "lexical"), including Sicily and Corsica (France). In Northern Italy and Sardinia, speakers use it inconsistently because the feature is not present in the dialectal substratum and is not usually shown in the written language unless a new word is produced by the fusion of the two: "chi sa"-> chissà ("who knows" in the sense of goodness knows). Regional variation The above IPA symbols and description refer to standard Italian, based on a somewhat idealized version of the Tuscan-derived national language. As is common in many cultures, this single version of the language was pushed as neutral, proper, and eventually superior, leading to some stigmatization of varying accents. Television news anchors and other high-profile figures had to put aside their regional Italian when in the public sphere. However, in more recent years the enforcement of this standard has fallen out of favor in Italy, and news reporters, actors, and the like are now more free to deliver their words in their native regional variety of Italian, which appeals to the Italian population's range of linguistic diversity. The variety is still not represented in its wholeness and accents from the South are maybe to be considered less popular, except in shows set in the South and in comedy, a field in which Naples, Sicily and the South in general have always been present. Though it still represents the basics for the standard variety, the loosened restrictions have led to Tuscan being seen for what it is, just one dialect among many with its own regional peculiarities and qualities, many of which are shared with Umbria, Southern Marche and Northern Lazio. In Tuscany (though not in standard Italian, which is derived from, but not equivalent to, Tuscan dialect), voiceless stops are typically pronounced as fricatives between vowels. That is, → : e.g. i capitani 'the captains' , a phenomenon known as the gorgia toscana 'Tuscan throat'. In a much more widespread area of Central Italy, postalveolar affricates are deaffricated when intervocalic so that in Cina ('in China') is pronounced but la Cina ('the China') is , and /ˈbat͡ʃo/ bacio 'kiss' is [ˈbaːʃo] rather than Standard Italian [ˈbaːt͡ʃo]. This deaffrication can result in minimal pairs distinguished only by length of the fricatives, [ʃ] issuing from