LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "la settimana (f.)" in Italian?
set-tee-MAH-nah, with the stress landing on the third syllable, not the first. In IPA: /set.tiˈma.na/.
Four syllables, set, ti, ma, and na, with the doubled t creating a firm break between the first two and the loudest beat falling on ma.
Listen: la settimana (f.)
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Sound it out
This word packs in two recurring Italian habits at once: a doubled consonant that's genuinely held longer, and an i that's always a full, tense "ee" — never the shorter vowel English gives the letter i in words like "sit."
Hear it in a sentence
Ci vediamo la prossima settimana.
See you next week.
Listen: Ci vediamo la prossima settimana.
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"Ci vediamo la prossima settimana" uses the reciprocal construction "ci vediamo," literally "we see each other," as the standard way to say "see you" — there's no direct one-word equivalent, so this reflexive-feeling verb form is doing double duty as a farewell.
"La prossima settimana" keeps the definite article in front of "prossima," where English drops it entirely ("next week," not "the next week"). This is the general Italian pattern for time expressions built with prossimo and scorso — the article stays.
Where English speakers slip
Longer Italian words tempt English speakers into front-loading the stress, the way English usually stresses early syllables in unfamiliar multisyllabic words — producing "SET-ti-ma-na." The real stress sits on the third syllable: "set-ti-MA-na."
The i in "tti" also often gets read as English's short "ih," as in "sit," giving "SET-tih-ma-na." Italian i is always the full, tense "ee" of "machine," no matter which syllable it lands in or whether that syllable is stressed.