LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "stare" in Italian?
STAH-reh, stress on the first syllable. In IPA: /ˈsta.re/. Another word that looks exactly like an English one and sounds nothing like it.
Two clear syllables, sta and re, both fully pronounced. The English homograph "stare" collapses to one syllable; Italian stare never does.
Listen: stare
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Sound it out
The st- cluster at the start is easy for English speakers — it's the ending that needs attention, since that final e carries its own full syllable rather than disappearing the way it does in the English look-alike.
Hear it in a sentence
Stasera sto a casa.
Tonight I'm staying home.
Listen: Stasera sto a casa.
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"Stasera sto a casa" uses sto, the io-form of stare, inside the everyday phrase stare a casa ("to stay home"). Stare covers ground that English splits between "to stay," "to be" (in a temporary state or feeling), and "to be located," which is why Italians ask Come stai? ("How are you," literally "how are you staying/feeling") rather than a form of essere for that particular question.
Stasera ("tonight") placed at the front of the sentence is a common way to set the time frame before saying what's happening, similar to opening an English sentence with "tonight" before the subject and verb.
Where English speakers slip
The identical spelling to the English word "stare," pronounced "STAIR," pulls learners toward that sound by habit. Italian stare shares no vowel with it — the first syllable opens on a plain, bright "ah."
As with the other short irregular infinitives in this group, the final e is often mistakenly dropped or reduced. It stays a full, clearly voiced syllable in Italian, unlike the silent e that ends the English word it's spelled like.