LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "anche" in Italian?
AHN-keh, with a hard "k" sound for the "che" — never the "ch" of English "chair." In IPA: /ˈan.ke/.
Two syllables, an and che, with the stress on the first — the h in "che" is silent in the sense that it adds no sound of its own, it just locks the c into a hard k.
Listen: anche
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Sound it out
This word runs the mirror-image rule to the one that trips people up in "ciao": there, an i after c softens it; here, an h after c keeps it hard, blocking the softening that c would normally undergo before e.
Hear it in a sentence
Anche Marco viene.
Marco is coming too.
Listen: Anche Marco viene.
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"Anche Marco viene" places "anche" directly before "Marco," which narrows its scope specifically to him: it's Marco, among others, who is also coming — not just that coming is also happening. Moving "anche" elsewhere in the sentence would shift what exactly it's adding emphasis to, the same way English "too" changes meaning depending on where it lands.
"Anche" is one of the most flexible words in Italian for adding emphasis or inclusion — "anch'io" (me too), "anche se" (even if), "anche perché" (also because) — all built on the same core word.
Where English speakers slip
The most common mistake is softening the "che" toward the English "ch" sound in "cheese" or "chair," since that's what the letters "ch" almost always signal in English. In Italian, "ch" before e or i is always a hard k — the exact opposite pattern from what "ci" and "ce" do without the h.
The second habit is over-nasalizing the vowel in "an," letting it bleed into the n the way it does in casual English speech, rather than keeping the vowel clean until the tongue closes for the nasal.