LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "dopo" in Italian?
DOH-poh, both syllables using the same closed, rounded "oh." In IPA: /ˈdo.po/. The vowel stays flat and steady, without the glide of the English "long o."
Two syllables, do and po, mirror images of each other in vowel quality — both use the same closed "oh," the first stressed and held slightly longer, the second light and quick.
Listen: dopo
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Sound it out
This word is fully regular in its spelling, so the main task is keeping both o's closed and rounded rather than letting either drift toward the more open vowel of English "off" or "dog."
Hear it in a sentence
Ci vediamo dopo cena.
See you after dinner.
Listen: Ci vediamo dopo cena.
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Like "dentro," "dopo" can function as a preposition on its own, taking "cena" directly with no linking word in between — "dopo cena" simply means "after dinner," the same tight construction as "dentro la borsa" earlier. This is a different job than the "domani" example: there, a single adverb stood alone; here "dopo" needs its own object to specify what comes before.
"Ci vediamo," the same reciprocal reflexive idiom from the "domani" example, reappears here paired with a prepositional phrase instead of a plain time adverb — swapping "domani" for "dopo cena" shows how flexible the same sign-off phrase is for filling in different specifics.
Where English speakers slip
English speakers often import the diphthong quality of the English "long o" — the vowel in "go" or "dope" actually glides from "oh" toward a light "oo" at the end, even though English spelling treats it as one simple sound. Italian "o" has no such glide: it's a pure, unchanging vowel held steady from start to finish, so "dopo" should sound flatter and more static than the English ear expects.
There's also a temptation to open the vowel toward the sound in "dog" or "off," especially since English rarely distinguishes two qualities of "o" the way Italian does. "Dopo" specifically wants the closed, rounder version both times, matching the vowel in "go," not "off."