Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

ajudar is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written [ɐʒuˈðaɾ]. It means “to help.” Say "uh-zhoo-DAR" — a soft 'uh' start, a French-style 'zh' in the middle, and stress on the final syllable.

Say "uh-zhoo-DAR" — a soft 'uh' start, a French-style 'zh' in the middle, and stress on the final syllable.

ajudar [ɐʒuˈðaɾ]

Stress falls on the last syllable -dar, standard for -ar verbs; the initial a is unstressed and reduces to a short, neutral 'uh' rather than the open 'ah' you'd expect from the spelling.

Listen: ajudar

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Sound it out

a- Unstressed, so it shrinks to a quick 'uh' (like the a in "about"), not the full "ah" an English speaker might default to.

ju- The j is pronounced like the 's' in "measure" or the 'zh' in "Zhivago" — never like an English 'j' (as in "jump"). Combined with u it sounds like "zhoo".

-dar Stressed and clear: a plain, dental 'd' (tongue against the back of the teeth, a touch further forward than English d) plus an open 'ah' and a soft final r.

Hear it in a sentence

Podes ajudar-me com isto?

Can you help me with this?

Listen: Podes ajudar-me com isto?

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"Podes ajudar-me com isto?" ("Can you help me with this?") shows the reflexive-style pronoun -me attached directly to the infinitive with a hyphen, a normal construction in European Portuguese object-pronoun placement. Podes is the informal tu form of poder ("can"), the everyday register used with friends and family rather than the more formal você.

Where English speakers slip

The most common slip is reading j as an English 'j' sound, producing something like "ah-JOO-dar" instead of the correct soft 'zh' ("ah-ZHOO-dar"); Portuguese j always has this French-like quality, in both European and Brazilian varieties, so this mistake isn't a Brazilian-influence issue — it's simply misreading the letter as English.