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

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

estação is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written [ɨʃtɐˈsɐ̃w̃]. It means “station.” Say "shtuh-SOWNG," almost swallowing the first e and finishing on a nasal, humming "sowng."

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

Say "shtuh-SOWNG," almost swallowing the first e and finishing on a nasal, humming "sowng."

estação [ɨʃtɐˈsɐ̃w̃]

Stress falls on the final syllable ção, a nasal diphthong; the initial unstressed e reduces so heavily that the word often starts with barely more than an "sh" sound before the t.

Listen: estação

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Sound it out

es- The unstressed e nearly vanishes, and the s before the consonant t becomes a "sh" sound, so this syllable often comes out closer to just "shh" than a full "es."

-ta- A quick, unstressed "tuh," a true dental t, leading into the stressed final syllable.

-ÇÃO The stressed, nasal ending: ç is always a plain "s" sound (never "k"), and ão is a nasal diphthong said through the nose, like a nasalized "sowng" with no hard final consonant.

Hear it in a sentence

Encontramo-nos na estação.

Let's meet at the station.

Listen: Encontramo-nos na estação.

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"Encontramo-nos na estação" attaches the reflexive pronoun nos after the verb with a hyphen, the standard European placement for reflexive verbs like encontrar-se ("to meet up") in this kind of clause, and the verb itself drops its final s before -nos for pronunciation reasons. Na estação contracts em with a ("in the," feminine) to mean "at the station."

Where English speakers slip

The opening es- is the trap: English speakers tend to pronounce a full, clear "es," but in Lisbon speech the unstressed e all but disappears, and the s shifts to "sh," so the word can start sounding almost like "shtação." This heavy initial reduction, much stronger than in Brazilian Portuguese, is one of the clearest audible fingerprints of the European accent and takes deliberate practice for English speakers used to pronouncing every written vowel.