LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "il pesce (m.)" in Italian?
PEH-sheh, stress on the first syllable. In IPA: /ˈpeʃʃe/. The three letters "sce" collapse into a single "sh" sound.
Two syllables, pe and sce, though "sce" looks like it should add its own vowel. It doesn't, the whole cluster is just one "sh" sound.
Listen: il pesce (m.)
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Sound it out
This follows the mirror image of the ci/ce rule from "ciao": sc before e or i makes a single "sh" sound, the e itself contributes nothing extra, it just signals that the sc is soft. Before a, o, or u, the same letters would instead make a hard "sk" sound, as in "scuola."
Hear it in a sentence
Il pesce nuota nel mare.
The fish swims in the sea.
Listen: Il pesce nuota nel mare.
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"Il pesce nuota nel mare" contracts "in" plus "il" into "nel," the same family of fused prepositions seen with "sul" and "del." "Nuota" comes from "nuotare" (to swim), a regular -are verb whose stem vowel shifts from "nuot-" in most forms, worth noticing since it looks slightly irregular at a glance but follows a predictable pattern.
As with the other animal words in this set, "il pesce" here refers to one specific fish doing the swimming, not fish as a category.
Where English speakers slip
English words like "scene" and "scent" train readers to expect "sc" before e to make a plain s sound, which leads a lot of learners to say "PEH-seh" instead of the correct "sh." Italian never does this: sc before e or i is always "sh," full stop.
The other slip is stretching the final e into a long "ee," by analogy with English words like "these" or "cheese" that end in a similar-looking string of letters. Italian's final e here stays short and open, "eh," not "ee."