da uno a dieci

Italian numbers 1 to 10

The first ten words, plus zero, with the stressed syllable of each. Learn these as words: everything up to un milione is built from them.

Updated 8 October 2026

FigureItalianTreccani headwordRough English guide
0zerożèroDZEH-ro: the z as "dz", the e open as in "bed"
1unounoOO-no
2duedueDOO-eh, two syllables
3tretrétreh, the e closed, close to "tray" without the glide
4quattroquattroKWAHT-tro, the double t held
5cinquecìnqueCHEEN-kweh
6seisèiSEH-ee, run together, the e open
7settesètteSET-teh, the e open, the double t held
8ottoòttoOT-to, the o open as in "hot"
9novenòveNOH-veh, the o open
10diecidièciDYEH-chee

The marks in the third column are the dictionary’s guide to stress and vowel quality, not spelling: sette is written without one. Treccani prints uno, due and quattro unmarked.

Three things to listen for

Double consonants are longerquattro, sette and otto hold the doubled t for longer than a single t. In Italian the length changes meaning in other words (sete, thirst, against sette), so it is worth drilling with numbers from the start.
Open and closed vowelsTreccani marks sèi, sètte, òtto, nòve and dièci with open vowels and tré with a closed one. The difference is small to an English ear and varies across Italy; the pronunciation page covers it for every number to twenty.
The c in cinque and dieciBefore i or e, c sounds like the English “ch”: cinque, dieci. Before a, o, u or a consonant it is a hard k.

uno changes before a noun

As a number on its own, 1 is uno. In front of a noun it takes the forms of the indefinite article: un gatto, uno zaino, una mela, un’arancia. No other number changes for gender, which is why a class can count everything else without thinking about the noun.

Practising 1 to 10

On the worksheet generator, the 1 to 10 range uses each number once before it repeats any. Matching pairs and Dictation suit a first lesson; Write the Italian makes pupils spell quattro and cinque, which they reliably misspell. Next: 11 to 20, where the order of the parts flips.

Questions teachers ask

How do you count to 10 in Italian?

uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque, sei, sette, otto, nove, dieci. Every one is stressed on its first syllable; tre and sei have only one. Three of them, quattro, sette and otto, have a double t that is held a beat longer than a single one, and a learner who says "qua-tro" is understood but heard as foreign.

Is it uno or un in Italian?

Counting, it is uno. Before a masculine noun the number behaves like the indefinite article: un libro, un amico, but uno studente and uno zaino, where the noun starts with s plus a consonant or with z. Before a feminine noun it is una, shortened to un’ before a vowel: una casa, un’ora. Treccani’s entry for uno sets out the same rule.

Where does the Italian word zero come from?

Treccani traces it to the medieval Latin zephyrum, Leonardo Fibonacci’s adaptation in the Liber abbaci of 1202 of the Arabic sifr, "nothing", itself a calque of the Sanskrit word for empty. Treccani marks the z as voiced, so zero starts with a "dz" sound.

Sources