How to Pronounce 'Mettere': Italian Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce mettere in Italian?

mettere is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈmet.te.re/. It means “to put.” MET-teh-reh , stress on the first syllable, with a clearly doubled t held a beat longer than a single English "t." In IPA: /ˈmet.te.re/ .

How do you pronounce "mettere" in Italian?

MET-teh-reh, stress on the first syllable, with a clearly doubled t held a beat longer than a single English "t." In IPA: /ˈmet.te.re/.

mettere /ˈmet.te.re/

Three syllables, met-te-re, stressed on the first. The double t across the met-te boundary isn't decorative — it's a real, audible lengthening of the consonant, one of Italian's doubled-consonant (gemination) sounds.

Listen: mettere

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Sound it out

English spelling doubles consonants all the time without changing the sound — "matter" and a hypothetical "mattter" would sound identical. Italian doubled consonants are different: they're genuinely held longer, and mettere is a clean example of that rule in action.

me The stressed syllable: an "m" plus a closed, tense "eh," not glided toward "ay."

tt A doubled, geminated "t": the closure is held noticeably longer than a single English t, almost like two short t's back to back rather than one quick tap.

e A closed "eh," unstressed but still fully voiced.

re A tapped "r" plus a fully voiced closed "eh" to close the word.

Hear it in a sentence

Metti il libro sul tavolo.

Put the book on the table.

Listen: Metti il libro sul tavolo.

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"Metti il libro sul tavolo" uses metti, the informal tu-imperative of mettere — a direct command, the kind you'd give a child, a sibling, or a close friend without it sounding rude. The same double-t gemination carries over from the infinitive into this conjugated form, so the doubled consonant isn't just an infinitive quirk.

Sul is a fused preposition-plus-article, su ("on") plus il ("the"), collapsing the two into one word the way Italian regularly does with prepositions before definite articles — a pattern worth noticing since it shows up constantly in everyday sentences like this one.

Where English speakers slip

The most specific mistake is pronouncing the double t exactly like a single one, saying something closer to "MEH-teh-reh." English spelling trains readers to ignore doubled letters as pronunciation cues, but Italian gemination is real and audible — the closure before releasing the t is genuinely longer.

The second, shared with credere and chiedere, is the stress-pattern overcorrection: after several -ere verbs that stress their ending, it's tempting to say "me-TE-re." Mettere keeps its stress on the first syllable, like its two sdrucciolo cousins in this set.