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Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "la sedia (f.)" in Italian?
lah SEH-dya, just two syllables, with the "dia" collapsing into one quick glide. In IPA: /la ˈsɛ.dja/. Stress is on the first syllable, and the open "eh" is the loudest sound in the word.
Written with three vowels, but spoken as two syllables, se and dia: the i before a doesn't get its own beat, it glides straight into the a, much like the "ia" ending in many Italian words.
Listen: la sedia (f.)
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Sound it out
"Sedia" looks like it should have three syllables, one for each vowel letter, but Italian regularly turns an unstressed i sitting right before another vowel into a quick glide rather than a full syllable — the same pattern behind words like "grazie" and "famiglia."
Hear it in a sentence
Siediti su questa sedia.
Sit on this chair.
Listen: Siediti su questa sedia.
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The example, "Siediti su questa sedia" (Sit on this chair), opens with "siediti," the informal imperative of the reflexive verb "sedersi" (to sit oneself down) — reflexive verbs like this attach the pronoun ("-ti") directly onto the end of the imperative form, a construction with no direct English equivalent (English just says "sit," with no reflexive marker).
Note the shared root: "siediti" and "sedia" both come from the same Latin base meaning "to sit," so recognizing one helps recall the other, even though their vowel patterns behave differently — "sedia" glides its i, while "siediti" keeps its i as a full separate sound.
Where English speakers slip
The most common mistake is treating each written vowel as its own syllable, producing a three-beat "SEH-dee-ah" instead of the correct two-beat "SEH-dya." English readers expect every vowel letter to carry its own sound, but Italian regularly compresses an unstressed i before a vowel into a fast glide.
The stressed e is also sometimes closed toward "ay" instead of kept open as "eh." Since this is the loudest syllable in a short word, getting that open vowel quality right carries a lot of the word's overall sound.