Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

desde is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written [ˈdeʒ.dɨ]. It means “from.” Say 'DEZH-duh', with a buzzy 'zh' (like the 's' in 'measure') in the middle, not a plain 's' or 'z'.

Say 'DEZH-duh', with a buzzy 'zh' (like the 's' in 'measure') in the middle, not a plain 's' or 'z'.

desde [ˈdeʒ.dɨ]

Stress falls on the first syllable; the 's' sits before a voiced consonant ('d'), so European Portuguese voices it further into a 'zh' sound [ʒ] rather than a plain 's' or even 'sh'.

Listen: desde

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Sound it out

des Stressed syllable where the 's' — sitting before the voiced 'd' — turns into a buzzy 'zh' sound [ʒ], like the middle sound in English 'measure' or 'vision'.

de Unstressed final syllable with the typical near-silent [ɨ] vowel, same reduction as the word 'de' on its own.

Hear it in a sentence

Trabalho aqui desde janeiro.

I've worked here from January.

Listen: Trabalho aqui desde janeiro.

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'Trabalho aqui desde janeiro' uses 'desde' to mark a starting point in time, equivalent to English 'since/from'. It commonly pairs with the present tense in Portuguese even when English would use present perfect ('I've worked'), since Portuguese treats the action as ongoing from that point.

Where English speakers slip

Learners typically pronounce the internal 's' as a plain English /s/ or, if they've learned the syllable-final-s-becomes-sh rule, as 'sh'. Neither is right here: because the next sound ('d') is voiced, EP voices the s all the way to 'zh' [ʒ] — a subtler rule that catches out even learners who've already internalized the basic s-to-sh pattern.