Say this out loud, slowly: Não, obrigado. Eu moro em São Paulo, perto da estação. Não, São and estação end in a vowel that comes out through the nose as well as the mouth, and a Brazilian ends obrigado and perto with something closer to “oo” than “oh”. Nasal vowels, and vowels that change when unstressed, are most of what makes Portuguese sound like Portuguese.
The spelling tells you a great deal. A small set of letters and marks shows where a vowel goes nasal, whether an e or an o is open or closed, and which syllable carries the stress. This piece teaches that code, with a pronunciation card and a nasal-vowel trainer. It is the first of four Portuguese pieces on this path.
Your device has no Portuguese voice, so the play buttons are hidden.
- Who it is for
- English speakers starting from zero. More than 250 million people speak Portuguese, most of them in Brazil; it is official in nine countries on four continents, from Portugal to Angola, Mozambique and East Timor.
- After this piece you can
- Read any Portuguese word aloud; recognise and make the nasal vowels; tell avó from avô; say where the stress falls and what each accent mark is doing; and know which sounds differ between Brazil and Portugal.
- Comes after
- Nothing is required. The method is in How Memory Builds a Language (37/01) and How a Language Grows (37/02); a gentle neighbour is Phonetics & the IPA (26/01).
- Leads to
- Portuguese 2: The Present Tense (37/32), where the sounds meet the first verbs.
- Honest line
- The baseline is Brazilian, with European differences named. A page cannot hear you: a tutor, a partner or a recording of yourself tells you whether it worked.
Vowels: seven when stressed, fewer when not
Portuguese writes five vowel letters but, in a stressed syllable, says seven vowels. a as in father; i as in machine; u as in food; and two each for e and o. The open e is the vowel of bed (café, sete); the closed e is nearer the start of they, without the glide (você, mesa). The open o is the vowel of British hot or American caught (avó, porta); the closed o is nearer the start of go, again without the glide (avô, bolo).
The difference carries meaning. Avó is “grandmother” and avô is “grandfather”; é is “is” and e is “and”. When a written mark is there it tells you which vowel to use: the acute (´) marks an open vowel, the circumflex (ˆ) a closed one. When there is no mark you learn the vowel with the word, the way you learn the vowel of English read.
Unstressed vowels weaken, and this is where Brazil and Portugal sound most different. In Brazil a final -o sounds like “oo” and a final -e like “ee”: obrigado ends in “-du”. A final -a becomes a relaxed “uh”. In Portugal many unstressed vowels shrink to a murmur or vanish, so telefone can sound like “tlfon”; that is why learners find European speech harder at first.
| Spelling | Sounds like | IPA | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| á, a (stressed) | father | /a/ | lá, casa |
| é, open e | bed | /ɛ/ | café, sete |
| ê, closed e | they, without the glide | /e/ | você, mesa |
| ó, open o | British hot | /ɔ/ | avó, porta |
| ô, closed o | go, without the glide | /o/ | avô, bolo |
| final -o, -e (Brazil) | oo, ee, short | /u/, /i/ | obrigado, noite |
Nasal vowels: the sound of Portuguese
A nasal vowel lets air flow out through the nose as well as the mouth. Pinch your nose and say pau (stick): nothing changes. Pinch it and say pão (bread): the sound is blocked. That difference separates whole pairs of words: pau and pão, mau (bad) and mão (hand), lá (there) and lã (wool), mudo (mute) and mundo (world).
The spelling marks a nasal vowel in two ways.
- A til (~) over the vowel: irmã, maçã, põe. Most often in the endings -ão (não, pão, estação), -õe (lições) and -ãe (mãe), which are nasal diphthongs: the vowel glides into a nasal “oo” or “ee”.
- An m or n that closes the syllable: mun-do, pon-te, cam-po, sim, um. The consonant itself is barely pronounced; it is a signal that the vowel before it is nasal. Do not say a full English n at the end of sim.
At the end of a word, -em and -am are nasal diphthongs too: bem and jovem end in a nasal “ey”, and falam sounds like an unstressed -ão. In Brazil a stressed vowel before m, n or nh in the next syllable also turns a little nasal (cama, banho); the trainer leaves those out and sticks to what the spelling marks.
A word appears in syllables. Tap the syllable whose vowel is nasal, or press “No nasal vowel”. Then see the reason and, when there is one, play the word it is paired with.
Without JavaScript: pão is nasal (til), pau is not; in mun-do the n closes the first syllable, so mun is nasal; casa has no til and no closing m or n, so it has no nasal vowel.
Consonants that surprise you
Most consonants are as in English. These are the ones to learn once. The play button on each row reads its examples aloud, if your device has a Portuguese voice.
| Spelling | Sounds like | IPA | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| lh | lli in million | /ʎ/ | filho, trabalho |
| nh | ny in canyon | /ɲ/ | vinho, amanhã |
| r at the start, rr | a breathy h in most of Brazil | /h/, /x/ | Rio, carro |
| r between vowels | one quick tap, like tt in American butter | /ɾ/ | caro, para |
| t, d before an i sound (Brazil) | ch, j | /tʃ/, /dʒ/ | tia, dia, leite |
| s between vowels; z | z | /z/ | casa, fazer |
| ch, x (usually) | sh | /ʃ/ | chave, peixe |
| j; g before e, i | s in measure | /ʒ/ | janela, gente |
| ç; c before e, i | s | /s/ | açúcar, cidade |
| l at the end of a syllable (Brazil) | w | /w/ | Brasil, mal |
| h | silent | none | hoje, hora |
Two more need a word. The letter x has four values, learned word by word: “sh” in peixe, “ks” in táxi, “z” in exame, “s” in próximo. And an r at the end of a syllable varies more than any other sound: an h in Rio, a tap in much of São Paulo and the South, an English-like r in the countryside. At the end of a verb it is often dropped in relaxed Brazilian speech: vou falar becomes “vou falá”.
Brazil, Portugal and Africa: one language, several accents
No variety is the correct one. This path teaches Brazilian pronunciation because most speakers live in Brazil. Each difference below is a fully native norm.
- t and d before i. “Tchia” and “djia” for tia and dia in most of Brazil; a plain t and d in Portugal, in Africa and in parts of north-eastern Brazil.
- s at the end of a syllable. An s in most of Brazil; “sh” in Rio de Janeiro and in Portugal, so mesmo sounds like “meshmo”.
- The strong r. A breathy h in most of Brazil; a throat r like French in Lisbon; a trill in parts of Portugal, Africa and southern Brazil.
- Unstressed vowels. Fairly full in Brazil, heavily reduced in Portugal. Angola and Mozambique follow European spelling, often with fuller vowels than Lisbon.
- Final l. A w in Brazil (Brasil rhymes with “-iu”); a dark l, as in English full, in Portugal.
Which one to copy? The one you will hear most. Stay with it for the first months.
Stress and accent marks
Two rules tell you which syllable is stressed.
- A word ending in a, e or o (with or without s), or in -am, -em, -ens, is stressed on the second to last syllable: CA-sa, FA-lam, JO-vem.
- A word ending in i or u (with or without s), in l, r, z or x, or in a nasal vowel or -ão, is stressed on the last syllable: a-QUI, Bra-SIL, fa-LAR, fe-LIZ, ir-MÃO.
- A word that breaks its rule carries a mark on the stressed vowel: ca-FÉ, vo-CÊ, FÁ-cil, a-ÇÚ-car. Words stressed on the third syllable from the end always carry one: MÚ-si-ca, SÁ-ba-do, Ô-ni-bus.
So each mark does two jobs. The acute (é, ó, á) marks the stress and, on e and o, an open vowel; the circumflex (ê, ô, â) marks the stress and a closed vowel. The til (ã, õ) marks a nasal vowel, and the stress when there is no other mark. The grave appears only in à, where a (to) has merged with a (the).
Because the vowels differ, the two countries sometimes mark a word differently: Brazilian econômico, bebê, Antônio are económico, bebé, António in Portugal. Both are correct.
Pronounce it
Fifteen words that cover the surprises. Tap a word, read the respelling and the IPA, then say it aloud before you play it.
Without JavaScript, use the tables above: they have the respelling cues and the IPA for every row.
Read it aloud
Read it aloud first, slowly. Then play it and compare.
Meu nome é João e eu moro numa cidade pequena, perto do mar. A minha casa é branca e tem um jardim. De manhã eu tomo um café com leite e vou a pé para o trabalho. E você? Onde você mora?
My name is João and I live in a small town, near the sea. My house is white and has a garden. In the morning I have a coffee with milk and walk to work. And you? Where do you live?
Check: are João, manhã and jardim nasal, and is the é of café open while the ê of você is closed?
Mistakes English speakers make
- Saying the n. English speakers read sim as “seem” and bom as “bomb”. Make the vowel nasal and let the consonant fade.
- An English -ão. Não is not “now”. Start with the a of father, push it through the nose, and glide toward a nasal “oo”.
- One e and one o. Avó and avô are different people. Obey the mark; with no mark, learn the vowel with the word.
- An English r. Caro (expensive) has a single tap; carro (car) has the strong, breathy r. A slip changes the word.
Fix one a week: record five words and listen back.
What sticks
- Seven stressed vowels: open and closed e and o are different sounds, and a mark tells you which.
- Nasal vowels are marked by a til or by an m or n that closes the syllable; final -am and -em are nasal too.
- In Brazil final -o sounds like oo, final -e like ee, and t and d before an i sound become ch and j.
- lh, nh, the strong r, ch, j, ç and a final l are learned once; x word by word.
- Stress follows two rules, and the acute, circumflex and til flag a break from them while also saying open, closed or nasal.
- Brazil, Portugal and Africa sound different and are all correct; choose the variety you will hear most.
Portuguese spelling is a code with a few extra signals: a mark for open or closed, a til or a closing m or n for nasal, and two stress rules. Learn to read them and you can say any word aloud; get the nasal vowels right and you will sound like a learner of Portuguese, not of Spanish.
Try this: read the passage above aloud once a day for three days, and record the third reading. Compare it with the first, listening only to the nasal vowels.
Sources. Plínio Barbosa and Eleonora Albano, “Brazilian Portuguese”, Journal of the International Phonetic Association (2004); Madalena Cruz-Ferreira, “European Portuguese”, same journal (1995); the Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990 for accents and stress; Celso Cunha and Lindley Cintra, Nova Gramática do Português Contemporâneo; speaker figures from the Instituto Camões and Ethnologue.
- 🌐 Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, with pronunciation notes and verb tables
- 🌐 Forvo: Portuguese, words recorded by native speakers from Brazil, Portugal and elsewhere
- 📘 Celso Cunha and Lindley Cintra, Nova Gramática do Português Contemporâneo (Lexikon), the standard reference grammar for both varieties