It’s time to take a deep dive into the pronunciation of vowels in European Portuguese! First we’ll invite you to play around with this interactive guide and then we’ll cover all the factors that go into creating the variety of subtle variations between each vowel sound.
Pronunciation of Vowels in European Portuguese
Explore the guide below to get to know Portuguese vowels a little bit better. You can mouseover Rui’s lovely face in the interactive diagram to listen to and practice all these vowel sounds! For the best possible experience, use a computer running the Chrome browser.
I Can’t Hear the Difference!
Hearing and producing the distinctions between each sound takes time and practice, so don’t worry about mastering all of these right away. We are primed to hear the distinctions between sounds in our native language(s), but the sounds of a new language will not come as naturally. This is because our brain keeps trying to match each sound to one that we already know!
It’s okay to start with what you know, which is why we included an English approximation for each Portuguese vowel sound. That way you have a more familiar example to get you started. As you progress in your learning, however, you’ll probably want to fine-tune your pronunciation. You don’t have to understand all this from the get-go, but familiarizing yourself with the concepts we use to talk about speech sounds can help you “open” your ears to more subtle differences over time.
So what exactly IS a vowel?
A vowel is simply one of the letters that represents a vowel sound, such as a, e, i, o, and u. Each of these letters corresponds to multiple different vowel sounds, depending on a variety of factors. For example, notice how the o in the stressed syllable is pronounced differently than the o in the unstressed syllable in this word:
bolocake
Furthermore, notice how the a is pronounced differently when different accent marks are added:
athe
háthere is
fãfan, enthusiast
Vowel sounds are produced by moving air through your mouth (and sometimes also your nose!) while modifying the air flow with your lips, tongue, and jaw position. Here are a few terms we sometimes use to talk about vowel sounds:
- ↕️ Height / openness / vertical position of the tongue: open (low) vs. medium vs. closed (high);
- ↔️ Frontness / backness / horizontal position of the tongue: front vs. mid vs. back;
- 😮 Roundness: rounded vs. unrounded;
- 👃 Nasality: oral vs. nasal;
- 👏 Stress: reduced vowels, stressed vs. unstressed.
Now that we’ve had an overview, let’s get into the details!
Factors that Affect Vowel Pronunciation
Openness ↕️
Open (low) or closed (high)? The vertical position of the tongue indicates the openness, or height, of a vowel. With open vowels, the tongue is lower, i.e. more flat against the bottom of your mouth, creating less obstruction of air flow. In contrast, with closed vowels your tongue is higher in the mouth, essentially closing off some of the air flow and thus creating a different resonance.
The sounds along the bottom of the chart are more open and as you move to the top of the chart, they become more closed. When comparing European and Brazilian Portuguese, you may notice that European Portuguese tends to sound more closed.
Accents can also give you clues about the openness of a vowel. The ˆ accent denotes a closed vowel, while the ´accent denotes an open vowel. We can hear the distinction in these examples (the first 2 are minimal pairs):
- Open: avógrandmother vs. Closed: avôgrandfather
- Open: estáit is vs. Medium: estathis
- Medium: a melanciawatermelon vs. Closed: o jardim de infânciakindergarten
For a live demonstration and further explanation, check out our video: Open & Closed Vowels
Frontness ↔️
Front, mid, or back? Front vowels are produced with the tip of your tongue engaged near the front of your mouth, around your hard palate. Back vowels are produced with the back of your tongue pulled back and up toward your soft palate.
Try repeating just the vowel sounds as you move from left to right in the chart. Notice how your tongue moves from the front to the back of the mouth.
Roundness 😮
Your lips affect the “roundness” of a vowel. They can form a circle, stay relaxed, or be spread to affect the resonance of the sound. Notice there is more rounding as you move from left to right in the chart.
Nasality 👃
The vowels we’ve discussed so far have been oral vowels because the air is directed through the mouth, but Portuguese also has nasal vowels that are produced when some of the air also travels through the nose. This is what distinguishes the oral vowel in the word maubad from the nasal vowel in the word mãohand .
You can usually tell a vowel is nasal by the ~ (tilde) accent mark, but unmarked vowels followed by the consonants n or m also usually have nasal sounds. For example: pensathink , bomgood , o campofield . The exception would be if the n or m is followed by another vowel, the vowel remains oral, as in amarto love or camabed .
Stress 👏
Usually, the penultimate syllable (second to last) gets the stress. For example:
MariaMaria
bibliotecalibrary
melanciawatermelon
But, as always, there are exceptions. The stress is on the last syllable if
- the word ends in: i, l, r, u, x, or z
- or if the vowel in the last syllable contains i or u
- This includes diphthongs(two vowels merged into one syllable) such as ai, au, ou, oi, ei, ui, ão, ãe, õe, and endings such as um, uns, im, ins, ais, etc.
Here are some examples:
algunssome, a few (masc.)
Câmara MunicipalCity Hall
Eu bebi um copo de águaI drank a glass of water
Ele falou muito altoHe spoke very loudly
If you see an accent mark, however, this overrides the rules, and the stress will be on the accented syllable instead:
gíriaslang
distânciadistance
o coraçãoheart
It’s also worth noting that unstressed vowels are almost always closed.
Reduced Vowels
This is what people are referring to when they say that European Portuguese speakers like to “eat” or “swallow” their vowels! Reduced vowels are basically vowels that are unstressed to the point that they are barely pronounced or even dropped entirely.
For example, the sounds for o and e are typically reduced in unstressed syllables at the end of a word. Listen to how the final o‘s and e‘s in ralado, isso, disse, etc. are pronounced in these sentences:
E eu ralado com issoI couldn't care less (idiom)
Foi aquele tipo que me disse isso.It was that guy (slang) who told me that
This is because European Portuguese is a stress-timed language, which means that the stressed syllables are pronounced very strongly and the unstressed syllables are shortened. In other words, more time is given to the stressed syllables.
Brazilian Portuguese, on the other hand, displays both stress-timed and syllable-timed properties, depending on the dialect, rate of speech, length of a phrase, and other contextual factors. In general, however, it tends to be more syllable-timed compared to European Portuguese. To see what we mean, compare this phrase in European Portuguese vs Brazilian Portuguese:
Letter by Letter
Now that we’ve explored some of these different factors, let’s take a look at some of the different vowel sounds associated with each written letter.
A: casahouse casahouse mábad fãfan lâminablade
E: seif energiaenergy sêbe(imperative) sécathedral
I: obrigadathank you (fem.) a famíliafamily
O: faloI speak o estômagostomach sóonly, just
U: tuyou
Diphthongs: maubad mãohand paifather mãemother reiking teuyour céusky ouviuheard feijõesbeans doistwo heróihero estouI am ruivoredhead meiohalf MaioMay
Other Notes
The best way to get comfortable with pronunciation is to spend plenty of time listening to native speakers rather than trying to memorize every single rule. But if you’re interested, here are a few more interesting patterns that you may notice along the way:
- Often you will notice that vowels change from closed to open when the word is pluralized. For example:
- The vowels in al and el are open when they are part of the same syllable:
- For words that end in -oso, the stressed syllable in the masculine, singular version gets a closed vowel, while all the other forms get the open vowel:
- There are some words which are spelled exactly the same, but that have different pronunciations depending on the intended meaning (called homographs):
- sede - sedeheadquarters - thirst Estou cheio de sede!I'm so thirsty! A sede da minha empresa é na cidadeMy company's headquarters are in the city
- para - parastop - to Ela paraShe stopsindicativo > presente Vou levar vinho para o jantarI'll bring wine to the dinner
- erro - erroI make mistakes - mistake Eu erroI am wrong, I err, I make mistakes Não vi erros nenhuns.I did not see any mistakes.
uau! Este manual de pronuncia é fantástico! Adicionei-o como uma página favorita. É difícil pronunciar os vocais corretamente enquanto estou a conversar mais concordo que o melhor maneira de praticar é ouvir um falante nativo. Muito obrigada – o que aprendo aqui em Practice Portuguese é inestimável!
Oh, muito obrigado pelo comentário simpático, Lorena! 🙂 Se ainda não viste, também temos um guia semelhante para consoantes: Pronunciation Guide for European Portuguese Consonants
This is incredibly helpful. Any chance you can add audio for the pair sede-sede. I’d love to hear the difference.
Glad we could help! We’ve added sede – sede to the list to be recorded. 🙂 (We record in batches, so there may be a delay.)
This page is helping…
Amazingly useful but for consulting from time to time, in one go it’s indigestible
Back in the day , as a French teacher I sometimes suggested pronouncing e.g. table as tab-LUH, then tab, then trying for a halfway house tabl
This would work for O and E in unstressed syllables at the end of a word e.g. issO, then iss, finally iss(with ‘o’ as a whisper)
This must have taken FOREVER to put together! I am very impressed. From one teacher to another, your site is top-notch and I am enjoying it very much.
Oi! Just starting and I can see my Spanish will be both a blessing and a curse: A blessing in the similarity of vocabulary, a curse in instinctively defaulting to Spanish pronunciation!
I felt the same way when I started! Don’t worry, it will get easier over time with lots of listening practice! 🙂
Sure would be swell if the English translations were included in this spectacular vowel sound chart! I learn the correct way to say something. Though I don’t know what I’m saying.
Acho mesmo difícil reconhecer os sons. Apesar de termos muitos sons “iguais”, em teoria, em francês, nao sempre os reconheço em português. O meu pesadelo é o “a” fechado que nao existe em francês. Estive a comparar os sons do catalao e do português e sao mesmo muito semelhantes. Percebo porque tinha a impressao, no inicio, que o português europeu era catalao 🙂
Obrigada pelo trabalho, é mesmo muito útil embora ache difícil conseguir discriminar estes sons e, ainda mais, reproduzilos!
Olá, Camille! Obrigado pelo comentário e parabéns pelo português excelente. É preciso muita persistência para treinar o ouvido a identificar os diferentes sons (sobretudo aqueles que “engolimos”), mas não é impossível. É interessante falares no catalão, porque realmente tem uma sonoridade mais próxima do português do que o castelhano (mas eu acho muito mais difícil de compreender!).
Every time I come back to these studies, I am impressed once again in the depth of understanding that you offer us.
A number of words when spoken, eg, Alguns, that are supposed to have the accent on the last syllable sound to me like the accent is on the first syllable.
Maria and melancia sound like the emphasis is on the second from the last syllable unless “ia” doesn’t count as 2 syllables. Am I hearing that correctly?
Thanks.
You are correct that the emphasis is on the 2nd from the last syllable in both Maria and melancia. This is the default placement for the stress in Portuguese words. In both examples, that syllable is the one with the “i” vowel. So it sounds like Ma-RI-a and me-lan-CI-a.
As for alguns, this is one of the exceptions where the stress is on the last syllable instead: al-GUNS. It’s a bit harder to tell with short words since they tend to sound more evenly stressed sometimes, but if you try to extend the “al” and then say “guns” very quickly, you’ll notice that it doesn’t sound right. (Sorry, it’s hard to describe this in written form!)
Thanks Molly!
Great description!
I think I’m getting it. 😊
A bit confusing on this. Letter by Letter A: says casa twice. I know they’re talking about different “A”s, but perhaps you could use a different example. THEN, if you wish to show how they are pronounced differently in the same word you could do that separately.
Those last 3 examples will take much practice! Very helpful tutorial. Avô and Avó kill me every time.
Yes, there are lots of tricky pairs like that! Sometimes, as with avô/avó or por/pôr, the accents help to distinguish them in writing, but then in conversation, we have to rely solely on our ears. Time and effort – it’ll get easier 🙂
Greetings! I understand that the generally accepted IPA symbol for the portuguese closed “a” (e.g., “amigo”) is [ɐ], or upside-down a.
In practice though, that closed “a” always sounds more like a schwa [ə] than an [ɐ] to my american-english-speaking ears. And Wikipedia seems to confirm: in its entry for “Portuguese phonology,” it says regarding the closed a sound that “in European Portuguese, . . . [ə] is more prevalent in nearly all unstressed syllables.”
Am I nuts? Is it really (or at least sometimes) [ə], despite what the IPA says?
Good point, I believe you’re right — that despite the convention of using [ɐ], [ə] may actually be more accurate when it’s an unstressed syllable. This is at least true for the standard “Lisbon” accent.
You may have also seen this in the Wikipedia article:
“In European Portuguese, the stressed [ɐ] only occurs in the following three contexts:
– Before a palatal consonant (such as telha)
– Before the palatal front glide (such as lei)
– Before a nasal consonant (such as cama)”
(Just as an added reference for anyone coming across this comment: here’s a chart where one can hear the difference between the two: [ɐ] vs. [ə])
Thank you so much for this helpful page! I am living and learning Portuguese in Mozambique. I feel that the Reduced Vowels at the ends of words are not quite as “reduced” here in Mozambique Portuguese. Especially after d or t. Am I hearing that correctly?
That sounds accurate! The Portuguese spoken in Brazil and in the Portuguese-speaking African countries tends to have more open, articulated vowels in general 🙂
All these examples are extremely helpful. I feel it would be more helpful for the last 3 pair examples to be shown in sentences to tell the differences instead of just a single word pronunciation.
Thanks, good point! We’ll work on adding some examples.
I think this will really cement my understanding and usage while using it in conjunction with Babble. THIS app is far better in breadth and the slow audio is really helpful. OBRIGADA
Now I am starting to understand 🙂
Would it possible to add a section for pronunciation of all the dipthongs and if they vary in different words?
Thanks
Olá! In this same Learning Note, if you scroll down to the section “Letter by Letter”, you can find examples of all diphthongs 🙂 Their pronunciation is consistent across words.
Maybe it’s the Algarve dialect, but Portimão is pronounced like Portimom and galão (milky coffee) like galom, quite different from não
Absolutely, regional variations in pronunciation are expected (and there’s a whole range of different Algarvian accents, to make matters “worse”). But overall, speakers will typically pronounce each diphthong consistently across words according to their individual accent.
I might be overthinking this but I feel like I can hear both in the audio clips depending on who’s speaking.
When a word ends in ‘er’ (i.e beber, fazer) is it an open er (in English like ‘air’) or a medium closed (similar to ‘ay-re’ in English)?
Thanks ☺️
Different accents may seem to pronounce it differently. However, it’s certainly not an open er (like in ‘air’)! It’s more like a medium closed like ‘ay-re’.
This was recommended by a friend who lives in Portugal and noticed that I am preparing my trip there by learning Brazilian Portuguese. I have been on it for 3 months and I am so glad that that happened, because the pronounciations are dramatically different. It hasn’t been wasted time but I am happy to be here now and properly learning European Portuguese, which is hard to find online.
I think I hear a difference but I don’t see it discussed here.
Are there any rules for proper usage of open or closed E and O vowels under stress?
I’m talking about words like ‘senhora’ (closed o) and ‘demora’ (open o).
Same story with ‘e’s – ‘mulher’ or ‘hotel’ (open e) and any -ER verb in infinitive form like ‘viver’ (closed e).
Olá! Good question. I am aware that Portuguese vowel pronunciation is framed to some extent under a set of rules/guidance, but we have so far not truly delved into this topic, due to its complexity (especially since etymology also needs to be taken into account).
Question about the pronunciation of the vowel when I am spelling a word…. looking at your chart, is the letter itself (saying alphabet letters) pronounced using the sound where the phonetic letter looks like itself? So ‘i’ is pronounced closed & front of mouth (top left corner)? ‘U’ is prounced like the top-right corner? ‘E’ mid-left column? When I try to spell my last name for a Portuguese person, they are either listening with ‘English ears’ or I am really pronouncing the letter incorrectly. Looking for some guidance on letter pronunciation. Thanks!
Olá! When you’re spelling individual letters, you should always use the open pronunciation. For the ‘i’, ‘u’ and ‘a’ vowels, the respective phonetic symbol happens to visually match the alphabet, but for ‘o’ and ‘e’, there’s a mismatch – their symbols for the open pronunciation are in the bottom left and bottom right positions, respectively, with visually distinct phonetic symbols. Here’s a Learning Note specifically for alphabet learning & pronunciation: The European Portuguese Alphabet | Practice Portuguese
This is my new favorite page. I have no doubt I will be returning to it frequently. Very helpful!
Muito obrigada for all the work that has gone into this
Why is the first ‘e’ in ‘está’ not pronounced at all, whereas we can hear it clearly in ‘esta’?
The pronunciation difference between “está” and “esta” is due to the accent on the ‘á’ in “está”, which indicates a stressed, open vowel sound and making the syllable “-tá” the tonic syllable. In “esta”, the tonic syllable is “es-” which makes it more audible, having the stressed and open vowel sound on the ‘e’.
In European Portuguese, unstressed vowels in unstressed syllables can often become less pronounced or even elided in rapid speech. This is why you might not hear the first ‘e’ in “está” as clearly and just a quick “sh” sound.
Hi guys,
First, thanks for an excellent website!! I absolutely love it.
I have a great dilemma for pronunciation of the diphthong “ei”. It started with how to say “meia de leite”. Our (Swedish) friends have learned from their teacher to say the ei diphthong like in words “day” and “hay” (just like it is explained somewhere in the website). However, when I listen to different examples, I clearly hear to it to be pronounced like “I” (i.e. personal pronoun for myself). Further, living in Vimeiro (ACB), I asked my concrete seller how to pronounce “Vimeiro”, and he said that it is definitely pronounced as “I” i.e. [Vim-“I”-ro] (sorry for the unprofessional phonetics….).
So, what “correct”? I understand that there might be dialectal differences as well.
Thanks again for all your fantastic work you do!
Thank you for your kind words about the website!
The pronunciation of the diphthong “ei” in European Portuguese is indeed similar to the English “day” or “hay” or “say” or “may” or “hey!”. However, it may suffer some variations according to regional accents which is part of what makes European Portuguese rich and diverse in its sounds.
Vimeiro is pronounced “veem-ay-roo”. If it was Vimairo it would be pronounced “veem-I-roo”.
Continue practicing and, over time, the variations in pronunciation will become more familiar to you. 🙂
I sense that the letter o gets pronounced two ways when it appears in the penultimate syllable of an unaccented word. Do you have any guidance? Am I hearing a distinction that isn’t there?
1. [oh]: obrigada, rombo, bolha
2. [ou in sought]: sobe, robe, bola, bolo
Olá! The vowel O may take up three possible pronunciations in the penultimate syllable of an unaccented word, since it may also sound as ‘oo’ in words such as ‘consolar’ or ‘jogar’. Etymology is one of the key determiners of how the vowel is pronounced – that also makes it very difficult to establish easy guidance to follow, unfortunately. Memorization is actually the easiest way to navigate these variations, I would say 🙂
(note: the first O of ‘bolo’ should sound like an OH)
Parabens! This site is top notch. You’ve answered every question I’ve ever had on Portuguese pronunciation and many I didn’t even know I had. I can see your hard work. Now I will watch all the videos. Obrigado!
Thank you so much for your comment! 🙂
Thank you Joseph for answering me in another post, I do have one more question about the sounds for the vowels, a, e, i, o, u, for example when we are spelling out our names/spelling letters on a phone call, do the 5 vowels sounds like /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ and /u/ accordingly in that 3×3 (interactive) table above? Thanks a lot!
You’re welcome! When spelling letters individually, they’ll all sound like you said, yes, with a very open sound for A, E and O 🙂
In the “Amigo” section it includes words like “tenho “ but I hear the vowel in these more as the first a in “fala” than the a in “amigo”. And it seems like in the exercises it is sometimes pronounced more like ai in “pai”, maybe even with a bit of nasal tone. Are my American ears mishearing this?
Olá 🙂 Across Portugal, certain vowels will have a range of sounds depending on the regional accent. But in Practice Portuguese, for the most part, you’re hearing the accent of the Lisbon region, where the sound of ‘tenho’ is comparable to the vowel sound in ‘amigo’, which for trained ears is pretty distinct from the sound of ‘fala’ or ‘pai’. Regarding nasality, it is expected around nasal consonants (M, N, NH) or in nasal diphthongs (-ãe, -ão, -õe). Otherwise, it’s not intrinsic to the language, but could be part of someone’s individual speech pattern.
This is the most comprehensive lesson on how vowels are pronounced and the guide is very comprehensive. It is like when I was learning to speak English when I’m in school when I was 7 where my teacher taught all the rules, so this is very helpful for a beginner.