Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

café is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written [kɐˈfɛ]. It means “coffee.” Stress the last syllable with an open 'eh': 'kuh-FEH', not the closed, drawn-out 'ay' of English 'café'.

Stress the last syllable with an open 'eh': 'kuh-FEH', not the closed, drawn-out 'ay' of English 'café'.

café [kɐˈfɛ]

The acute accent on é marks both the stress (final syllable) and an open vowel quality; the first, unstressed syllable ca reduces from a clear 'ah' toward a muted 'uh'.

Listen: café

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Sound it out

ca Unstressed, so it's a quick, weak 'kuh' rather than a full 'kah'.

fé The stressed syllable, with an open 'eh' as in English 'bed', held with more energy and length than the first syllable — quite different from the closed 'ay' glide of English 'café'.

Hear it in a sentence

Tomo um café de manhã.

I have a coffee in the morning.

Listen: Tomo um café de manhã.

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Tomo um café de manhã uses tomar (literally 'to take') rather than beber for drinking coffee — a very common Portuguese collocation that English speakers wouldn't guess from 'take a coffee'. Um café is the indefinite article plus the noun, and de manhã ('in the morning') is a standard time expression placed at the end of the sentence.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers import the English word 'café' with its closed, gliding 'ay' vowel and level stress. In European Portuguese the stress must land squarely on the final é with a genuinely open vowel, and the first syllable should be noticeably reduced — closer to 'kfé' in fast Lisbon speech — rather than the evenly-weighted 'ka-fay' of English.