LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "così" in Italian?
koh-ZEE, with the s pronounced as a voiced "z" and stress landing on the final, accented syllable. In IPA: /koˈzi/. That accent mark is what shows the stress isn't on the first syllable.
Two syllables, co and sì, stressed on the second, an unusual pattern for Italian that the accent mark flags directly.
Listen: così
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Sound it out
The s sitting between two vowels here is voiced, sounding like the z in English "rose," not the hissing s in "sun." English s between vowels can go either way (compare the noun and verb forms of "present"), but in standard Italian, an intervocalic s like this one is consistently voiced.
Hear it in a sentence
Si fa così.
You do it like this.
Listen: Si fa così.
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"Si fa così" uses the impersonal si construction, literally "one does [it] like this," Italian's extremely common way of giving general instructions without a direct imperative or a specific subject. "Così" here means "this way," pointing to a manner just demonstrated or described.
"Così" is also one of Italian's most frequent all-purpose words beyond this meaning, doing double duty as "so" or "therefore" in other contexts, as in "così stanco" (so tired).
Where English speakers slip
The most common mistake is devoicing the intervocalic s, producing a hissy "koh-SEE" instead of the correct buzzy "koh-ZEE." English speakers default to the unvoiced s from spelling habits, but Italian voices s between vowels in words like this one.
The second slip is misplacing stress on the first syllable, saying "KOH-zee" instead of respecting the accent that pushes stress onto the final "sì." This is the same trap as with "perché": don't assume default penultimate stress when an accent mark says otherwise.