Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "a" in Portuguese (Portugal)?

Q: How do you pronounce a in Portuguese (Portugal)?

a is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written [ɐ]. It means “to.” The same reduced 'uh' sound as the feminine article 'a' — context tells you which meaning is intended, not the pronunciation.

The same reduced 'uh' sound as the feminine article 'a' — context tells you which meaning is intended, not the pronunciation.

a [ɐ]

Unstressed preposition meaning 'to' (direction), spelled and pronounced identically to the feminine definite article — only the surrounding grammar tells them apart.

Listen: a

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Sound it out

a Reduces to the same short, central [ɐ] as the article 'a' — there is no pronunciation difference between the preposition and the article.

(whole word) A single reduced vowel with no consonant, fused onto the place name that follows it in normal speech.

Hear it in a sentence

Vou a Lisboa amanhã.

I'm going to Lisbon tomorrow.

Listen: Vou a Lisboa amanhã.

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'Vou a Lisboa amanhã' uses 'a' to express motion toward a place, like English 'to'. Unlike with countries that take an article (e.g. 'ao Brasil'), city names like 'Lisboa' usually take the bare preposition 'a' with no article fused in.

Where English speakers slip

Because this 'a' looks identical to the feminine article, learners sometimes second-guess the pronunciation and try to stress or open it up to mark the difference. There's no such distinction in speech — both are unstressed [ɐ]; only the accented 'à' (used with feminine nouns, e.g. 'à escola') gets the fuller, open pronunciation.