How to Pronounce 'Esperar': Portuguese (Portugal) Pronunciation Guide

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

esperar is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written [ɨʃpɨˈɾaɾ]. It means “to wait/hope.” Say "ush-puh-RAR" — the first two syllables shrink almost to a mumble, and the stress lands hard on the final -rar.

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

Say "ush-puh-RAR" — the first two syllables shrink almost to a mumble, and the stress lands hard on the final -rar.

esperar [ɨʃpɨˈɾaɾ]

Stress falls on the final syllable, as with all regular -ar infinitives; the two unstressed e's both collapse toward a neutral 'uh' sound, which is the single biggest difference from how the spelling looks.

Listen: esperar

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Sound it out

es- Not "ess" like English. The e reduces to a faint 'uh', and because the s sits at the end of a syllable (before a consonant), it hisses like the 'sh' in "shoe", giving roughly "ush".

pe- Also reduced — the e here almost disappears, landing close to the 'uh' in "about". Together with the first syllable it comes out closer to "shpuh" than "es-peh".

-rar The stressed syllable: a clear, open 'ah' followed by a soft, slightly gargled r — nothing like the hard American r in "rar", closer to a light throat-clear.

Hear it in a sentence

Espero por ti aqui.

I'll wait for you here.

Listen: Espero por ti aqui.

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"Espero por ti aqui" ("I'll wait for you here") uses esperar with the preposition por — European Portuguese pairs esperar with por when it means physically waiting for a person, whereas waiting for an event or a thing usually drops the preposition (esperar o autocarro, "to wait for the bus"). Note this same verb also covers "to hope" (espero que sim, "I hope so"), so context decides the translation.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers tend to pronounce the opening es- as a crisp "ess", the way they'd say the letter S, instead of swallowing it into a quick 'uh-sh'. In Brazilian Portuguese that opening s stays a plain 's' sound (es-peh-RAR), so learners coming from Brazilian media often skip the 'sh' quality entirely — in Lisbon Portuguese it must hiss.