LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "chiudere" in Italian?
KYOO-deh-reh, with the stress right up front on the first syllable. In IPA: /ˈkju.de.re/. That first syllable blends into one quick sound, closer to English "cue" than to two separate beats.
Written as three syllables, chiu, de, and re, but the first is really one fused sound: the i never gets its own beat, it slides straight into the u to make a single "kyoo."
Listen: chiudere
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Sound it out
The h right after c is doing quiet but essential work here: in Italian, "ch" before i or e always makes a hard "k" sound, never the soft "ch" English speakers expect from that letter pair. Once you know that, "chiudere" reads almost exactly the way it sounds.
Hear it in a sentence
Chiudo la finestra.
I'm closing the window.
Listen: Chiudo la finestra.
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"Chiudo la finestra" uses the plain present tense (chiudo, "I close") to describe something happening right now, which is exactly where English needs the "-ing" form: "I'm closing the window." Italian doesn't have a mandatory progressive tense for everyday statements like this, so the simple present quietly covers both "I close" and "I'm closing," and context tells you which one is meant.
"Chiudere" is the regular, everyday verb for closing something physical, a window, a door, a shop, and it conjugates like a standard -ere verb throughout.
Where English speakers slip
The most common mistake is pronouncing "ch" the English way, as a soft "ch" like in "cheese" or "chip," giving something closer to "CHOO-deh-reh." Italian "ch" is the opposite of that instinct: before i or e it's always a hard "k," the same sound that starts "key" or "kit."
The other slip is splitting "chiu" into two syllables, "kee-OO-deh-reh," because English readers expect every vowel letter to carry its own sound. In Italian that i is purely a spelling signal that keeps the c hard, so the word stays at three syllables total, not four.