LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "pronto" in Italian?
PRON-toh, stress on the first syllable, both beats short and crisp. In IPA: /ˈpron.to/.
Two syllables, pron and to, weight on the first. The consonant cluster pr at the start is pronounced as one quick unit, with no vowel sneaking in between the two consonants the way some English speakers instinctively add one.
Listen: pronto
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
Sound it out
The main hurdle is the pr cluster at the start, which needs to stay tight and immediate rather than getting an extra vowel sound wedged in to ease the transition.
Hear it in a sentence
Sei pronto per uscire?
Are you ready to go out?
Listen: Sei pronto per uscire?
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
"Pronto" has an extra life in Italian beyond "ready": it's also the standard way to answer the phone, the equivalent of English "hello?" when picking up — a usage with no connection at all to readiness, so it's worth learning as its own fixed expression. In the example sentence it's functioning in its literal sense, agreeing with the masculine "tu" being addressed and paired with "per" plus the infinitive "uscire" to mean "ready to go out."
Like "libero" and "sbagliato," this is a regular four-form adjective, so a woman would be asked "Sei pronta per uscire?" instead.
Where English speakers slip
English speakers often insert a faint vowel between the p and r at the start, producing something like "puh-RON-toh" instead of the tight, immediate cluster Italian requires. Italian consonant clusters at the start of a word are pronounced back-to-back with no intervening schwa.
The other slip is over-aspirating the initial p, adding the puff of breath English gives word-initial p's (as in "pot"). Italian p is unaspirated throughout, closer to the p sound in English "spot" than in "pot" — try saying it with a hand in front of your mouth and feeling for no burst of air.