Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide

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

A single nasal syllable — like saying "bo" while humming through your nose, roughly "bõ".

bom bõ

One syllable, so there's no stress choice to make — but don't miss the nasalization, which is the whole character of the word.

Listen: bom

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Sound it out

b Just like English "b" in "boy".

om A nasal "o" — the "m" isn't a hard consonant closure; it signals that the vowel before it is nasalized, like the "on" in French "bon".

Hear it in a sentence

Este café é muito bom.

This coffee is very good.

Listen: Este café é muito bom.

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"Este café é muito bom" shows "bom" agreeing with the masculine noun "café". "Muito" again works as an adverb meaning "very", intensifying the adjective. "Bom" is irregular — its feminine form is "boa", not the expected regular ending on the same stem.

Where English speakers slip

The biggest mistake is pronouncing the "m" as a hard consonant closure like in English "bomb" — in Portuguese it's silent as a consonant and only nasalizes the vowel. This nasalization is shared with Brazilian Portuguese, but EP speakers tend to keep the vowel quality tighter and less diphthongized than some BP speakers do.