LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "la macchina (f.)" in Italian?
lah MAHK-kee-nah, stress firmly on the first syllable, with a hard, held k sound in the middle. In IPA: /la ˈmak.ki.na/. It has nothing to do with the English word "machine" beyond a shared root.
Three syllables, mac, chi, and na, with the stress up front on the very first one — this is what Italian calls a "sdrucciola" word, stressed on the third-from-last syllable, which trips up the common assumption that Italian stress usually falls one syllable earlier.
Listen: la macchina (f.)
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Sound it out
The double c followed by h is the key to "macchina": ch after c (before i or e) keeps the c hard, like English "k," and doubling it means that hard k sound is held noticeably longer than a single c would be.
Hear it in a sentence
La mia macchina è nuova.
My car is new.
Listen: La mia macchina è nuova.
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The example, "La mia macchina è nuova" (My car is new), shows a rule with no English equivalent: Italian keeps the definite article in front of a possessive, "la mia" literally "the my," where English just says "my car" with no article at all. Dropping "la" and saying only "mia macchina" would sound like poetry or a set phrase, not everyday speech.
"Nuova" agreeing with feminine "macchina" (rather than the masculine "nuovo") is a reminder that "macchina," despite ending in -a like most feminine nouns, is reliably feminine — helpful here since the ending itself already signals the gender.
Where English speakers slip
The English cognate "machine" is the biggest trap: it pulls learners toward a soft "sh" sound and a stress on the second syllable, something like "muh-SHEEN." Italian "macchina" keeps the c hard throughout (there's no "sh" sound anywhere) and stresses the very first syllable instead.
The second common error is stress placement generally — many English speakers, told that Italian stress "usually" falls on the second-to-last syllable, guess "mac-CHI-na." "Macchina" is one of the common exceptions, stressed on the third-from-last syllable instead, so it has to be learned as its own pattern rather than applied by the general rule.