How to Pronounce 'Rosso': Italian Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce rosso in Italian?

rosso is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈrɔsso/. It means “red.” RAWSS-oh , with an open, wide "aw" and a strong double s. In IPA: /ˈrɔsso/ .

How do you pronounce "rosso" in Italian?

RAWSS-oh, with an open, wide "aw" and a strong double s. In IPA: /ˈrɔsso/.

rosso /ˈrɔsso/

Two syllables, ros and so, with stress and vowel length piling onto that first syllable, and the double s held noticeably longer than a single s would be.

Listen: rosso

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Sound it out

Two features stack up in this short word: an open o that's wider than most English "o" sounds, and a doubled s that has to be held, not just spelled, twice as long as a single s.

r A light, tapped r, one quick flick of the tongue against the ridge behind the teeth, nothing like the English r's curled-back glide.

o An open "aw," as in "law" or "paw," wider and lower than the o in English "rose."

sso A doubled s, held audibly longer than a single s, into a closed "oh." Think of the length gap between "misspell" and "my spell": that's roughly the gap between rosso and a hypothetical single-s roso.

Hear it in a sentence

La mela è rossa.

The apple is red.

Listen: La mela è rossa.

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"La mela è rossa" shows adjective agreement in action: rosso becomes rossa to match the feminine mela (apple), demonstrating that Italian color adjectives change endings for gender, unlike invariable ones such as blu or English adjectives, which never inflect at all.

The sentence follows the noun + è + adjective pattern, putting the adjective in predicate position after the verb, which happens to line up closely with the English word order "the apple is red."

Where English speakers slip

Softening or shortening the double s into something closer to a single, voiced z, saying "ROH-zoh," is the most common slip. Italian ss between vowels is always voiceless and held long, never voiced the way an intervocalic single s sometimes is, as in "rosa."

The other habit is flattening the open o into the closed o of English "rose" or "row." Rosso wants a wider, lower "aw" vowel, closer to "raw" than to "row."