How to Pronounce 'Essere': Italian Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce essere in Italian?

essere is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈɛs.se.re/. It means “to be.” EHS-seh-reh , with an open "eh" up front and a double s held noticeably longer than a single one. In IPA: /ˈɛs.se.re/ .

How do you pronounce "essere" in Italian?

EHS-seh-reh, with an open "eh" up front and a double s held noticeably longer than a single one. In IPA: /ˈɛs.se.re/.

essere /ˈɛs.se.re/

Three syllables, es, se, and re, with the stress firmly on the first — the double s in the middle belongs to both syllables at once, which is exactly why it's held longer.

Listen: essere

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Sound it out

The letters here spell out a real feature of Italian sound, not just a spelling quirk: double consonants like the ss in "essere" are actually pronounced longer than single ones, a distinction English doesn't make at all.

e An open "eh," as in English "bet" — the stressed vowel, and noticeably more open than the closed e found later in the word.

ss A genuinely lengthened s, held for roughly twice as long as a single s — English spelling doubles letters all the time without lengthening the sound, but Italian really does hold this one.

re An unstressed final syllable with a tapped r and a closed e, said lightly and without dragging.

Hear it in a sentence

Voglio essere felice.

I want to be happy.

Listen: Voglio essere felice.

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"Voglio essere felice" pairs the modal-like verb "volere" (to want) with an infinitive, the standard way Italian links two verbs together — much like English "want to be." "Essere" is one of Italian's two auxiliary verbs (alongside "avere") and among its most irregular, so seeing it in its plain infinitive form here is a relatively rare, clean look at the verb.

Because "essere" is infinitive, it carries no information about who is happy — that comes entirely from context, here implied to be the speaker through "voglio."

Where English speakers slip

The most common mistake is collapsing the double s into a single, ordinary-length s, saying something like "EH-seh-reh." English doubles letters in spelling all the time ("letter," "dinner") without ever lengthening the sound, so the instinct to skip the extra length here is strong — but in Italian, that length is often the only thing distinguishing one word from another.

The other slip is misplacing the stress, especially pulling it toward the middle syllable by analogy with English or French words that look similar (like "assert"). Italian "essere" stresses the very first syllable, ES-se-re, full stop.