Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

fruta is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written [ˈfɾu.tɐ]. It means “fruit.” Say 'FROO-tuh', with a crisp tapped r right after the f and a fading 'uh' at the end.

Say 'FROO-tuh', with a crisp tapped r right after the f and a fading 'uh' at the end.

fruta [ˈfɾu.tɐ]

Stress falls on the first syllable fru; the r is a light tap of the tongue (not the throaty European r), and the final unstressed a reduces to a soft 'uh'.

Listen: fruta

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Sound it out

fr F followed immediately by a quick tongue-tap r, similar to the r in Spanish 'pero' — nothing like the guttural Portuguese rr sound.

u A clear, stressed 'oo' as in English 'boot'.

ta Unstressed, so the a fades toward a light 'uh' rather than a full 'ah'.

Hear it in a sentence

Como fruta todos os dias.

I eat fruit every day.

Listen: Como fruta todos os dias.

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Como fruta todos os dias uses comer (to eat) in the eu form como — a false friend for English speakers, since 'como' also means 'how' or 'like' in other contexts, but here it's simply 'I eat'. Fruta is used generically without an article, much like English 'I eat fruit', because it refers to fruit as a category rather than a specific item.

Where English speakers slip

Because fruta starts with fr, English speakers often reach for the strong, throat-clearing rr sound they've heard elsewhere in Portuguese. Here the r is a single quick flap of the tongue tip, not the uvular rr of words like carro — mixing the two up is one of the most common single-word errors for learners of European Portuguese.