Learn European Portuguese Pronunciation

Portuguese pronunciation is known as very difficult. It's complex indeed, but the good news are: it's not anarchic.

With the rules presented in this tutorial you will be able to know how written Portuguese actually sounds like.

If you already know consonant pronunciation, you can jump to vowel pronunciation.

If you already know all this, and just want to improve your European Portuguese accent, you can see our subtitled video examples.

Letter	IPA	Portuguese Example	English Approximation
B	/b/	banana	banana
D	/d/	dose	dose
F	/f/	face	face
L	/l/	lista	list
M	/m/	manual	manual
N	/n/	normal	normal
P	/p/	parte	part
Q	/k/	qualidade	quality
S	/s/	social	social
Z	/z/	zebra	zebra
T	/t/	táxi	taxi
V	/v/	visita	visit

These were really easy, right?

Let's continue!

Letter	Followed By	IPA	Portuguese Example	English Approximation
C	A, O or U	/k/	cultura	culture
C	E or I	/s/	centro	centre
Ç	-	/s/	serviço	service
G	A, O or U	/g/	gasolina	gasoline
G	E or I	/ʒ/	género	genre (ZH)
J	-	/ʒ/	Jaime	Jacques (ZH)
H	Word beginning	Silent	hora	hour
R	Word beginning	/ʁ/	recente	(Guttural R)
R	Otherwise	/ɾ/	central	city (AE)

Now lets see the digraphs:

Letter	IPA	Portuguese Example	English Approximation
CH	/ʃ/	charada	charade (SH)
LH	/ʎ/	brilhante	brilliant
NH	/ɲ/	canhão	canyon
RR	/ʁ/	correto	(Guttural R)
SS	/s/	clássico	classic

Some consonants will have a different sound when they are at the end of a syllable. This is the case of M, N, S and Z.

Letter	IPA	Portuguese Example
M	Silent	importante	Precedent vowel becomes nasal
N	Silent	contacto	Precedent vowel becomes nasal

Followed by unvoiced consonant (c, ç, ch, f, p, q, s, t) or pause:

Letter	IPA	Portuguese Example	English Approximation
S	/ʃ/	Inglês	English
Z		faz três

Followed by voiced consonant (b, d, g, j, l, lh, m, n, nh, r, rr, v, z):

Letter	IPA	Portuguese Example	English Approximation
S	/ʒ/	Islândia	casual (ZH)
Z	/ʒ/	felizmente	seizure (ZH)

Between vowels:

Letter	IPA	Portuguese Example	English Approximation
S	/z/	visita	visit
Z	/z/	feliz aniversário	lazy

Any consonant other than these (M, N, S, Z) won't change. Lets continue.

I left out X to the end on purpose. This is the only ambiguous consonant in Portuguese:

Letter	Rule	IPA	Portuguese Example	English Approximation
X	Word beginning	/ʃ/	xampô	shampoo
	After diphtong		caixa
	After ME		mexicano
	After EN		enxame

At de end of syllables it will follow the same rules applied to S and Z.

In other cases it may have one of the following sounds:

Letter	IPA	Portuguese Example	English Approximation
X	/ʃ/	luxúria	shop
	/s/	máximo	social
	/z/	existe	xylophone
	/ks/	táxi	taxi
	/gz/	hexadecimal	example

This is it. We've seen all consonant sounds.

Exercise: pay attention how the consonants sound:

Complete Guide