9 Portuguese Vowel Sounds To Practice

February 8, 2025

Have you ever said a Portuguese palavrawordCommunity Slow audio Play audio Noun, Singular, Feminine  and the other person didn’t understand you? It’s the same as when someone speaks to you in your native language and their accent makes it mais difícilmore difficultCommunity Slow audio Play audio to understand.

Of course, no one can expect us to sound like a native if we aren’t one. Our main goal should be to be understood, and improving your pronunciation is just as important as mastering grammar. 🙂

Although European Portuguese has a lot of sounds similar to English, its open and closed vowel sounds are what make it especially challenging. While Portuguese has just 5 vowel letters (a, e, i, o, u), it actually has 9 different vowel sounds (excluding nasal sounds).

Each vowel sound is shaped by 3 different factors:

😮 1) How wide you open your mouth

• Open, like in bolaballCommunity Slow audio Play audio Noun, Singular, Feminine
• Medium, like in bolocakeCommunity Slow audio Play audio Noun, Singular, Masculine
• Closed, like in umaone(fem.)Community Slow audio Play audio Number, Singular, Feminine

👅 2) Where you put your tongue

• Front (your tongue goes forward, almost touching your lower teeth), like in o livrobookCommunity Slow audio Play audio Noun, Singular, Masculine
• Middle (let your tongue rest naturally in the middle), like in falaspeaksCommunity Slow audio Play audio Conjugated Verbs
• Back (pull your tongue back), like in umaone(fem.)Community Slow audio Play audio Number, Singular, Feminine

👄 3) How rounded your lips are

• Not rounded, but in a little smile shape: smiling slightly to say o livrobookCommunity Slow audio Play audio Noun, Singular, Masculine
• Medium, natural position: relaxed for falaspeaksCommunity Slow audio Play audio Conjugated Verbs
• Very rounded, like an ‘o’ shape: whistling position for umaone(fem.)Community Slow audio Play audio Number, Singular, Feminine

Try it: say papelpaperCommunity  and then bolaballCommunity Slow audio Play audio Noun, Singular, Feminine . When you speak the stressed vowels, do you feel your mouth shift from front to back? And your lips from unrounded to rounded?

Here’s a visual guide that shows the mouth positions for each vowel sound.

(Here’s an interactive version of the chart above, with examples and audio)

Sometimes it sounds like closed vowels are not even there at all! Does it ever sound like someone said “brigad” instead of obrigado? Or “shtar” instead of estar?

Every word in Portuguese has one syllable that gets more emphasis. That’s the stressed syllable. For example:

• cafécoffee, coffee shopCommunity Slow audio Play audio Noun, Singular, Masculine
• bolaballCommunity Slow audio Play audio Noun, Singular, Feminine
• amigofriendCommunity Slow audio Play audio Noun, Singular, Masculine

Vowels become more closed when they’re not in the stressed syllable (learn more about this here). It’s a bit like how in English we say “chocolate” more like “CHOC-lit” instead of “CHOC-o-late”. That unstressed ‘o’ seems to disappear.

In general, these unstressed vowels tend to become more subtle, and are sometimes barely heard:

• semprealwaysCommunity Slow audio Play audio Adverb
• comohow, whatCommunity Slow audio Play audio Adverb
• casahouse, homeCommunity Slow audio Play audio Noun, Singular, Feminine
• DesculpeSorryCommunity Slow audio Play audio Interjection

These closed vowel sounds are one of the main reasons European Portuguese can be harder to understand at first. If you can master these, then both your pronunciation and comprehension will improve significantly.

Now that you’ve made it past the difficult vowels, here’s a treat: The vowels ‘i’ and ‘u’ are much easier because they’re pronounced the same, regardless of whether they fall on a stressed or unstressed syllable.

For example, the words vivi and cucu have the last syllable emphasized, but the emphasis does not affect the vowel sounds of the i and u.

• Eu vivi aquiI lived hereCommunity Slow audio Play audio
• cucuA Portuguese word for peek-a-booCommunity Slow audio Play audio

Don’t worry if it takes a while to internalize all of these pronunciation rules (especially for ‘a’, ‘e’ and ‘o’). The best way to get comfortable with pronunciation is to spend a lot of time listening to native speakers. For extra listening practice, check out our podcast, or browse our Shorties to find tons of content to fit your level and interests.

The more you hear Portuguese being spoken, the easier it is to understand the language. But most importantly, while there’s always room to improve, try not to stress yourself out about it. The goal is communication, not perfection.

Keep practicing! 🙂