How to pronounce Italian double consonants

In Italian all consonants, with exception of the letter ‘h’, which has no sound, can be doubled.

So in different words of the Italian vocabulary you can have occurrences of bb, cc, dd, gg, pp, tt, ff, ll, mm, nn, rr, ss, vv, zz.

There are no fixed rules to determine whether and when a double consonant is used instead of the single one, and their occurrence needs to be learned as a part of the vocabulary.The letter ‘q’ represents an exception because it is usually doubled as ‘cq’ (as in acqua, water). The word soqquadro (mess) is the only Italian word where a double ‘q’ occurs.  

As for pronunciation you can distinguish two major categories. The double consonants BB, CC, DD, GG, PP, CQ, TT are pronounced with a stronger stop in comparison with the words where a single consonant occurs. Take for example the pair Fabio (a male name) and dubbio (doubt), or the pair ape (bee) and tappo (cork).

You can use the examples I have just given to check whether you are pronouncing the difference between single and doubled consonants correctly with a simple exercise. Hold a piece of paper approximately at one centimetre from your mouth when repeating the words. In both cases you should notice that the piece of paper slightly bends when you come to the part of the word that contains the ‘b’ or the ‘p’, however this movement should be considerably more marked if the consonant is doubled.

The second double consonants category includes:  FF, LL, MM, NN, RR, SS, VV, ZZ. Take for example the pair palo (pole) and palla (ball), or the pair rosa (rose) and sasso (pebble). In this case the difference between the single and the double consonant is that if the consonant is doubled the sound of the consonant is longer.

Learning how to pronounce double consonants is an important part of learning Italian pronunciation especially because there are many words that differ only with respect to this feature and otherwise have completely different meanings. Let me give you an example. The word camino means fireplace, but in Italian you also have cammino, meaning way/road. Here below you can find a list of potentially ambiguous word pairs like this, but the list is not exhaustive. Why not try and find some more? Buon divertimento!

casa                        house                        cassa                        box, crate

eco                        echo                        ecco                         here it is

gramo                     miserable            grammo            gram

nono                        ninth                        nonno                        granfather

pala                        shovel                       palla                        ball

polo                        pole                        pollo                        chicken

papa                        pope                        pappa                       bread soup/food

rosa                        rose                        rossa                        red

sera                        evening            serra                        greenhouse

sete                        thirst                        sette                        seven

resa                        surrender            ressa                        crowd

note                        notes                        notte                        night

faro                        lighthouse            farro                        spelt

sono                        I am/they are            sonno                       sleep

feta                        feta cheese            fetta                        slice

copia                        copy                        coppia                      couple

bela                        it bleats            bella                        beautiful

cane                        dog                        canne                       reeds