LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "cattivo" in Italian?
kaht-TEE-voh, with the stress on the second syllable and a genuinely doubled t. In IPA: /katˈti.vo/.
Three syllables, cat, ti, and vo, with the doubled "tt" in the middle held noticeably longer than a single t, a real length difference and not just a spelling quirk.
Listen: cattivo
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
Sound it out
"Cattivo" is a textbook case of Italian gemination, doubled consonants that are actually pronounced longer, not just written twice. English has nothing like this: doubled letters in English spelling (like the two t's in "letter") don't change how long the consonant sounds, but in Italian they genuinely do.
Hear it in a sentence
Questa minestra è cattiva.
This soup is bad.
Listen: Questa minestra è cattiva.
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
The published example, "Questa minestra è cattiva," shows the feminine agreement form, "cattiva," matching the feminine noun "minestra" (soup); the masculine dictionary form is "cattivo." The English gloss here specifies "bad (in quality)" for good reason: applied to food or objects, "cattivo" simply means poor quality or bad-tasting, but applied to a person, the same word shifts to mean naughty, badly-behaved, or even wicked ("un bambino cattivo," a naughty child; "un uomo cattivo," a bad/evil man). Context, not a different word, carries that distinction.
Where English speakers slip
The most common mistake is collapsing the doubled t into a single quick tap, producing something closer to "ka-TEE-voh." That erases the length contrast that real Italian gemination depends on; the tt in "cattivo" should sound audibly longer than a single t would.
There's also a pull to stress the first syllable, "CAT-tivo," by analogy with the English word "cat" sitting right there in the spelling. Correct Italian stress falls on the second syllable, cat-TI-vo.