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Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "imparare" in Italian?
eem-pah-RAH-reh, with the stress on the third syllable. In IPA: /im.paˈra.re/. Every syllable is spoken fully, with no glides to blend.
Four clean syllables, im, pa, ra, and re, evenly spaced, with the loudest, longest stress landing on "ra," not the first syllable.
Listen: imparare
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Sound it out
The tricky part of "imparare" isn't any single sound, it's resisting the urge to reduce the unstressed vowels the way English does. Italian gives every a its full, open value in every syllable, stressed or not.
Hear it in a sentence
Imparo l'italiano.
I'm learning Italian.
Listen: Imparo l'italiano.
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"Imparo l'italiano" uses the plain present tense with a progressive meaning, "I'm learning," the same pattern seen throughout this vocabulary set, where Italian's simple present covers both "I learn" and "I'm learning." "L'italiano" shows elision: "lo" (the masculine article used before words starting with certain consonant clusters or, historically, before vowels) contracts to "l'" before the vowel-initial "italiano." Referring to the language this way, as a definite noun rather than an adjective, is the standard Italian pattern, closer to "I'm learning the Italian" in structure, even though English drops the article entirely.
Where English speakers slip
Seeing "im-" at the start, English speakers often stress the first syllable by reflex, the way English does in words like "IM-portant" or "IM-print," producing something like "IM-pa-rare." Correct Italian stress falls on the third syllable, impa-RA-re.
The other common slip is letting the unstressed a's drift toward an English schwa, so "imparare" starts to sound like "im-puh-RAH-ruh." Italian vowels don't reduce in unstressed position the way English ones do, every a keeps its full, open "ah" quality throughout the word.