LingoDrop
Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "hotel" in Portuguese (Portugal)?
Say "oh-TEL" — the h is completely silent, and the stress lands on the second syllable, unlike in English.
Stress falls on the final syllable "tel"; the h at the start is never pronounced in Portuguese, so the word begins directly with an open o sound.
Listen: hotel
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
Reservámos um hotel perto da praia.
We booked a hotel near the beach.
Listen: Reservámos um hotel perto da praia.
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
"Reservámos um hotel perto da praia" uses reservámos, the first-person plural preterite of reservar, with the accented á marking the European Portuguese spelling that distinguishes it from the present tense reservamos. Perto de contracts with the feminine article as perto da to mean "near the."
Where English speakers slip
Because English "hotel" stresses the second syllable but keeps a strongly aspirated h, English speakers often keep that h sound out of habit; in Portuguese the h is completely silent, so the word should start cleanly on the o. The final l should also stay a light, clear l with the tongue tip at the gum ridge, rather than the dark, back-of-the-mouth "l" English speakers use in words like "hotel" or "table."