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Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "comprar" in Portuguese (Portugal)?
Sounds like "kohm-PRAR" with a nasal "oh" — say it through the nose a little, like the "om" in French "nom".
Stress falls on the final -prar; the om in the first syllable is a nasal vowel, pronounced with air escaping through the nose, and the m itself is not fully pronounced as a consonant.
Listen: comprar
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Hear it in a sentence
Vou comprar pão.
I'm going to buy bread.
Listen: Vou comprar pão.
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"Vou comprar pão" ("I'm going to buy bread") uses vou + infinitive as the everyday way to express near-future plans, much like English "going to". Pão is a nasal diphthong word and takes no article here since it refers to bread in general rather than a specific loaf. This near-future construction with ir is far more common in speech than the formal future tense (comprarei).
Where English speakers slip
English speakers often pronounce the om in comprar as a full "om" with a hard m consonant, like in English "tom"; in Portuguese it's a nasal vowel where the m is absorbed into the nasal quality of the vowel rather than pronounced separately. Pão is equally tricky — its nasal ão diphthong has no real English equivalent, and mispronouncing it as "pow" or "pahn" is a very common beginner error.