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Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "la penna (f.)" in Italian?
PEN-nah, stress on the first syllable, with a firmly doubled n. In IPA: /ˈpen.na/.
Two syllables, pen and na, with the doubled n between them held noticeably longer than a single English n.
Listen: la penna (f.)
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Sound it out
A short, simple word, but the doubled n is exactly the kind of detail that's easy to skip if you're reading it the way you'd read the English word "pen."
Hear it in a sentence
Mi presti una penna?
Can you lend me a pen?
Listen: Mi presti una penna?
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"Penna" is feminine, taking "la" in the base form, though the example turns to the indefinite article: "Mi presti una penna?" "Presti" is the "tu"-form of "prestare" (to lend), and "mi presti" puts the indirect object pronoun "mi" (to me) before the verb, the standard Italian word order, where English would instead put "me" after the verb ("lend me a pen").
Framing the request as a plain question with rising intonation, "Mi presti una penna?" rather than a conditional "Mi presteresti una penna?", is the normal, casual way to ask a small favor of someone you're on familiar terms with; the conditional would sound more formal or more hesitant than the situation calls for.
Where English speakers slip
The most common mistake is under-holding the double n, saying something close to "PEH-na" with a single, light n. In Italian, that gemination is what keeps "penna" (pen) audibly different from a hypothetical single-n version, the doubled consonant is a real timing difference, not just a spelling formality.
The other slip is drifting the vowel toward the open a of English "pan," saying something like "PAN-nah." The Italian e in "penna" is closed and stays close to the vowel in English "pen" itself, this happens to be one of the rare cases where the English spelling cognate actually points learners in the right direction, as long as they don't overcorrect toward "a."