LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "fare" in Italian?
FAH-reh, stress on the first syllable. In IPA: /ˈfa.re/. It looks exactly like the English word "fare," but it isn't said anything like it.
Two clear syllables, fa and re, both fully voiced. Nothing here reduces to a single beat the way the English homograph "fare" does.
Listen: fare
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Sound it out
The spelling is a trap for English speakers specifically because it's also an English word. Once you set that word aside, "fare" sounds out exactly as written in Italian: two plain, open syllables.
Hear it in a sentence
Cosa fai stasera?
What are you doing tonight?
Listen: Cosa fai stasera?
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"Cosa fai stasera?" uses fai, the informal tu-form of fare, not the infinitive itself — this is the version you'll actually hear when a friend asks what you're up to tonight. The question word cosa ("what") plus a conjugated verb is the everyday, casual way to ask about someone's plans, the kind of thing you'd say to a peer rather than to a stranger.
Fare is one of Italian's true workhorse verbs, covering both "to do" and "to make" in contexts where English would pick different words entirely — from "fare colazione" (to have breakfast, literally "to make breakfast") to "fare una domanda" (to ask a question, literally "to make a question").
Where English speakers slip
The single biggest trap is the spelling itself: "fare" is also an English word, pronounced "FAIR," and it's very easy to default to that familiar sound without meaning to. Italian "fare" shares no vowel sounds with its English look-alike at all.
The second slip is the usual one for words ending in -e: treating that final letter as silent, the way English spelling almost always does. In Italian, the e at the end of fare is a full syllable in its own right.