LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "poco" in Italian?
POH-koh, with POH rhyming with "so," and a hard "koh" to finish. In IPA: /ˈpo.ko/.
Two syllables, po and co, both short and closed — neither vowel drifts toward a diphthong the way English speakers might expect from a word that looks like it should rhyme with "echo."
Listen: poco
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Sound it out
"Poco" is short, and every letter earns exactly one clean, closed sound — the main task is resisting any temptation to stretch or soften the vowels.
Hear it in a sentence
Ho poco tempo.
I have little time.
Listen: Ho poco tempo.
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"Poco" here functions as an adjective agreeing with "tempo" (time, masculine singular), which is why it keeps its base -o ending; describing a feminine noun, like "poca pazienza" (little patience), would shift it to "poca."
"Poco" is the natural opposite of "molto," and the two are often learned as a pair — where "molto" says there's a lot of something, "poco" says there's not much, and both can function as either adjectives that agree with a noun or adverbs that stay fixed, depending on what they're modifying.
Where English speakers slip
English speakers sometimes let the first o glide the way it does in words like "polka" or "cocoa," adding a slight "oh-oo" drift. Italian's o here is short and pure, cut off cleanly rather than trailing into a second vowel sound.
The other slip is softening the second c, treating it like the c in a word such as "process" and reaching for an s sound. Before o, Italian c is always hard, the same k sound as in "cot" — there's no soft-c trigger anywhere in this word.