LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "lo sport (m.)" in Italian?
SPORT, close to English but with an open "aw" vowel and a tapped r. In IPA: /spɔrt/. It stays one crisp syllable, borrowed directly from English.
Just one syllable, sport, spelled and borrowed straight from English. The whole word is pronounced in a single quick burst, with no extra vowel inserted anywhere.
Listen: lo sport (m.)
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Sound it out
"Sport" is an English loanword used as-is in Italian, so the spelling isn't the challenge — the challenge is that the ear expects an English r and an English o, and Italian supplies neither.
Hear it in a sentence
Faccio sport tre volte a settimana.
I do sports three times a week.
Listen: Faccio sport tre volte a settimana.
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"Faccio sport tre volte a settimana" ("I do sports three times a week") uses fare ("to do/make") for sports in general, where English typically says "play" for team sports and "do" for others inconsistently — Italian just uses fare sport across the board, a fixed collocation worth learning as a chunk rather than translating word by word. "Sport" is also invariable for number in Italian, so lo sport and gli sport share the same spelling, with only the article showing the change.
Where English speakers slip
The most common mistake is keeping the English r, which curls the tongue back and colors the vowel before it into something like "spoort." The Italian r is a single quick tap against the ridge behind the upper teeth, and it leaves the vowel in front of it untouched.
The second slip is rounding the o the way English "sport" does, gliding it toward "oh." Italian keeps it a pure open "aw" with no added roundness or glide, held for exactly one short beat.