LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "la sorella (f.)" in Italian?
lah soh-REL-lah, stress on the middle syllable, open e as in "bet." In IPA: /la soˈrɛl.la/. Like fratello, the double l is held longer than English speakers expect.
Three syllables, so, rel, and la, with the article la out front and the stress on rel.
Listen: la sorella (f.)
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Sound it out
Sorella shares fratello's two trouble spots — an open stressed e and a doubled l — but starts instead with an unstressed so, which should stay a short, clear "oh" rather than fading into a mumble.
Hear it in a sentence
Ho una sorella maggiore.
I have an older sister.
Listen: Ho una sorella maggiore.
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"Ho una sorella maggiore" uses the indefinite article una, not the article-dropping pattern seen with mia madre or mio fratello — that exception only applies with a possessive like mia or mio in front of a singular family word. Here the sentence is counting/introducing a sister rather than identifying a specific one, so una behaves exactly like it would with any other noun.
"Maggiore" is the irregular comparative of grande used for age, meaning "older" (or "oldest" among more than two), placed after the noun the way most descriptive adjectives are in Italian.
Where English speakers slip
Sorella packs two trouble spots into one word, and English speakers often fix only one: they'll hold the double l correctly but let the stressed e drift toward a closed sound, or get the open e right while shortening the ll back down to a single consonant. Both need attention at once.
The unstressed so at the start is also a common casualty — English reduces unstressed vowels to a schwa by habit, so "sorella" can come out as "suh-RELL-ah." Italian keeps that first syllable a clear, if brief, "oh."