LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "a" in Italian?
AH, one short, open vowel, nothing else. In IPA: /a/.
Just a single vowel sound, no consonant at all; short, unstressed, and always leaning into the word that follows it.
Listen: a
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Sound it out
There's no spelling puzzle here since it's a single letter; the main adjustment is resisting the pull of the English word "a," which looks identical on the page but is a completely different word with a completely different vowel sound.
Hear it in a sentence
Vado a Roma domani.
I'm going to Rome tomorrow.
Listen: Vado a Roma domani.
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In "Vado a Roma domani," a marks motion toward a place, the same role "to" plays in English, and it's one of Italian's small set of simple prepositions (a, di, da, in, con, su, per, tra/fra) that get memorized as a set early on since they don't map one-to-one onto English prepositions.
Vado is the first-person singular present of andare (to go), and as with dorme earlier, this simple present tense covers what English needs the progressive for: vado a Roma domani reads naturally as "I'm going to Rome tomorrow" even though no continuous "-ing" verb form is involved in the Italian.
Where English speakers slip
Pronouncing a with the English indefinite article's reduced schwa sound (the "uh" in "a cup") is common since the spelling is identical to English "a." The Italian word is a full, open "ah" vowel, never reduced, even though it's grammatically unstressed in the sentence.
Reaching for in instead of a before a city name is the other frequent slip, since both can translate loosely as "in/to." Italian consistently uses a before city and town names for both location and motion (a Roma, vivo a Roma, vado a Roma), reserving in mainly for countries and regions, as in vivo in Italia.