LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "ancora" in Italian?
an-KOH-rah, stress on the middle syllable, with a closed "o" as in "go." In IPA: /anˈko.ra/. Stressing the wrong syllable turns this into a different word entirely.
Three syllables, an-co-ra, stressed on the middle one. That stress placement is the whole story here: the exact same letters stressed on the first syllable instead, "àncora," spell a completely different word, the noun meaning "anchor."
Listen: ancora
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Sound it out
Nothing in the spelling of "ancora" marks where the stress falls — Italian doesn't write accent marks on most words, even when, as here, getting the stress wrong changes the meaning. This one has to be memorized: an-CO-ra, not AN-co-ra.
Hear it in a sentence
Sei ancora qui?
Are you still here?
Listen: Sei ancora qui?
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"Ancora" covers both "still" and "again" in English, two ideas that sound unrelated but share the same underlying sense in Italian of something continuing or repeating. In "Sei ancora qui?", it's the "still" meaning: the question checks whether a situation (being here) that started earlier is continuing into the present, the same function "still" serves in the English translation.
"Sei" is the informal second-person present of "essere" (to be), so the whole question is casual, phrased the way one friend would ask another rather than a formal inquiry.
Where English speakers slip
The most common mistake is stressing the first syllable, "AN-co-ra," which happens to spell the unrelated noun "àncora" (anchor). Say "Sei ancora qui?" with that stress and an Italian listener will need a beat to reparse what you meant — the stress genuinely carries the meaning here, not just the accent.
English speakers also tend to color the first syllable with the flat, front English "a" of "and" or "cat," rather than Italian's pure open back "ah." Even though this syllable is unstressed and said quickly, it should still use the same open "ah" quality as the stressed "a" in a word like "casa," not the English short-a sound.