How to Pronounce 'Oggi': Italian Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce oggi in Italian?

oggi is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈɔd.dʒi/. It means “today.” AW-jee , with an open first vowel and a long, held "j" sound in the middle. In IPA: /ˈɔd.dʒi/ . The double g doesn't add a hard-g sound, it lengthens the soft "j."

How do you pronounce "oggi" in Italian?

AW-jee, with an open first vowel and a long, held "j" sound in the middle. In IPA: /ˈɔd.dʒi/. The double g doesn't add a hard-g sound, it lengthens the soft "j."

oggi /ˈɔd.dʒi/

Two syllables, og and gi, but that middle "gg" is doubled for a reason: it's held longer than a single g would be, giving the word a brief, deliberate hitch right before the "j" sound.

Listen: oggi

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

The double "gg" here works together with the following "i" as a single unit: "ggi" makes one long "j" sound, like the "j" in "jeep" but held noticeably longer, not a hard g followed by a separate "jee."

o An open "ɔ," like the vowel in "off" or British "hot" — brighter and more open than the closed "o" of "oh."

ggi A single long "j" sound, as in "jeep" or "jam," held for extra length because of the double g. The i itself isn't a separate vowel sound here, it just marks the g as soft.

Hear it in a sentence

Oggi piove.

It's raining today.

Listen: Oggi piove.

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

"Piove" is a weather verb used impersonally, with no subject at all — Italian doesn't need an equivalent of the English dummy "it" in "it's raining," the verb form alone carries the whole meaning. "Oggi" simply sits in front to anchor the statement in time, a very common position for time adverbs that open a sentence, similar to how English can start a sentence with "Today, ..."

Because the sentence has no subject pronoun to attach to, "oggi" is doing all the contextual work: swap it for "domani" or "ieri" and the identical verb "piove" shifts what day is being talked about.

Where English speakers slip

The single biggest mistake is treating the double "gg" as a hard "g," the way English spelling almost always does with doubled g before a vowel (compare "foggy" or "soggy"). Italian doesn't work that way: g before i or e is always soft, a "j" sound, regardless of how many g's are written, so "oggi" should sound like a lengthened "AW-jee," never anything close to "AW-ghee."

The stressed vowel is also often closed into "oh" rather than left open. Italian "oggi" wants the more open vowel of "off" or "dog," not the rounder, tenser vowel English speakers produce in words like "oh" or "go."