LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "il marito (m.)" in Italian?
eel mah-REE-toh, stress on the middle syllable. In IPA: /il maˈri.to/. The stressed i is a long, pure "ee," nothing like the diphthong in the English word "right."
Three syllables, ma, ri, and to, with the article il out front and the stress on ri.
Listen: il marito (m.)
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Sound it out
The r between the two vowels is a single light tap of the tongue, not a curl or a roll, and the stressed i that follows it is a pure, unchanging vowel — English speakers tend to reach for a diphthong on any stressed "i," but Italian never adds that glide.
Hear it in a sentence
Suo marito è medico.
Her husband is a doctor.
Listen: Suo marito è medico.
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"Suo marito è medico" uses suo the same gender-neutral way as suo figlio — it means "her husband" here only because context (and English translation) tells us so; the word itself would work equally well for "his husband."
"È medico" drops the article Italian would otherwise use before a noun — with essere plus a profession, no un/una appears, unlike English "is a doctor." Naming someone's job this way is treated more like describing a quality than introducing a new noun.
Where English speakers slip
The stressed i is the biggest trap: English readers instinctively pronounce a stressed "i" the way they would in "write" or "delight," a diphthong that glides from "ah" toward "ee." Italian i never does this — it's a single, pure vowel, so "marito" should sound like "mah-REE-toh," not "mah-RYE-toh."
The r is also often over-rolled into a trilled, Spanish-style sound. Between two vowels like this, Italian r is just one light tap, not a series of vibrations — trills are reserved mainly for words spelled with a doubled rr.