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Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "il cavallo (m.)" in Italian?
kah-VAHL-loh, stress on the middle syllable. In IPA: /kaˈvallo/. The double l needs real length, held well past where an English speaker would naturally stop.
Three syllables, ca-val-lo, with the stressed middle syllable carrying that doubled l, held noticeably longer than a single l would be.
Listen: il cavallo (m.)
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Sound it out
Cavallo shares a root with English "cavalry" and "cavalier" (both from Latin caballus), which can help with meaning, but neither the stress pattern nor the doubled l carries over from those English cognates, so lean on the sound rather than the spelling.
Hear it in a sentence
Il cavallo corre veloce.
The horse runs fast.
Listen: Il cavallo corre veloce.
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"Il cavallo corre veloce" pairs the verb "correre" (to run) with "veloce" used adverbially, meaning "fast," without any need for the longer adverb "velocemente." Italian does this often with short, common adjectives describing manner, the same shortcut seen with "forte" in "il cane abbaia forte."
"Corre" is the third-person singular of "correre," one of the -ere verbs whose present tense is worth knowing well since horses, dogs, and rivers all tend to "correre" in beginner Italian material.
Where English speakers slip
Anyone with a little Spanish is prone to a specific mix-up here: Spanish "ll" makes a completely different sound (something closer to "y" or "j"), and carrying that over gives a mispronunciation nothing like Italian. Italian "ll" is simply a single l sound held twice as long, not a palatal sound at all.
The second common error is shifting the stress to the first syllable, CA-va-lo, likely by analogy with the English cognate "cavalry." Italian keeps the stress firmly on the middle syllable, ca-VAL-lo.