Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

cabeça is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written [kɐˈbe.sɐ]. It means “head.” Say "kuh-BEH-suh", with the middle syllable clearly stressed and open, and both a's reduced to a light "uh".

Say "kuh-BEH-suh", with the middle syllable clearly stressed and open, and both a's reduced to a light "uh".

cabeça [kɐˈbe.sɐ]

Stress is on the middle syllable "be"; the first and last "a" letters both reduce to a weak central "uh", and "ç" is always a plain "s" sound.

Listen: cabeça

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Sound it out

ca Unstressed "a" reduces to a quick, light "uh", so this sounds closer to English "kuh" than "kah".

be A clear, open, stressed "eh" as in English "bed", the strongest syllable in the word.

ça The cedilla ç is always a plain "s" as in "sun" (never "k" or "ts"), followed by the same reduced final "uh".

Hear it in a sentence

Dói-me a cabeça.

My head hurts.

Listen: Dói-me a cabeça.

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"Dói-me a cabeça" means "My head hurts." This uses the common Portuguese pattern of an indirect-object pronoun ("me") plus the verb doer (to hurt) before the subject "a cabeça" — literally "it hurts to me, the head" — which feels backwards to English speakers used to saying "my head hurts" with a possessive.

Where English speakers slip

Learners often pronounce both "a"s in "cabeça" the same full way they would in Spanish ("kah-BEH-sah"). In European Portuguese only the stressed middle syllable keeps its full vowel quality; the surrounding a's are swallowed toward a neutral "uh", giving the word a much lighter, clipped rhythm than its Spanish cognate.