LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "vicino" in Italian?
vee-CHEE-noh, with a hard "ch" as in "cheese," never an "s" sound. In IPA: /viˈtʃino/.
Three syllables, vi, ci, and no, with the stress on the middle one. Each syllable stays crisp and separate, none of them blurred together.
Listen: vicino
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Sound it out
The only real trap in the spelling is the ci: in Italian, c before i or e is always a hard "ch" sound, as in "chip," never the softer "s" that the same letters often produce in English.
Hear it in a sentence
La farmacia è qui vicino.
The pharmacy is nearby.
Listen: La farmacia è qui vicino.
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"Vicino" can work as either an adjective or, as here, an adverb. The example, "La farmacia è qui vicino" ("The pharmacy is nearby"), uses it adverbially and invariably, paired with "qui" to mean something like "right around here." As an adjective, "vicino" changes form to agree with what it describes, "vicino/vicina/vicini/vicine," and typically pairs with "a": "la farmacia è vicina a casa mia" ("the pharmacy is near my house"). "Qui vicino," by contrast, is a fixed, invariable chunk that doesn't change no matter what's being located.
This adjective/adverb overlap is common with Italian words describing distance and position, and "qui vicino" specifically is one of the most useful everyday phrases for giving directions.
Where English speakers slip
"Vicino" shares a root with the English word "vicinity," and "vicinity" pronounces its "ci" as a soft "s" sound. That cognate pull leads a lot of English speakers to say "vi-SEE-no" instead of the correct "vi-CHEE-no." Italian c before i is always the hard "ch" of "cheese" or "chip," the English "s"-flavored "ci" pattern from words like "vicinity" or "decision" simply doesn't exist in Italian.
The stress is also worth flagging: it falls on the middle syllable, vi-CI-no, not the first, which can feel counterintuitive since the related English words stress differently.