Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

mesa is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written [ˈme.zɐ]. It means “table.” Say 'MEH-zuh', with a closed-ish stressed e, a voiced 'z' sound for the s, and a fading final 'uh'.

Say 'MEH-zuh', with a closed-ish stressed e, a voiced 'z' sound for the s, and a fading final 'uh'.

mesa [ˈme.zɐ]

Stress is on the first syllable me; the single s between two vowels is voiced like an English 'z', and the unstressed final a reduces to a soft 'uh'.

Listen: mesa

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Sound it out

me The stressed syllable, a clear 'eh' sound similar to English 'bed' but a touch more closed.

s Between two vowels, s is voiced, sounding exactly like an English 'z' — not the hissy 's' of English 'mesa' if read at face value.

a Unstressed, so it fades to a light central 'uh'.

Hear it in a sentence

Põe os pratos na mesa.

Put the plates on the table.

Listen: Põe os pratos na mesa.

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Põe os pratos na mesa uses the irregular verb pôr (to put) in its tu-or-você-adjacent imperative-like form põe, and na contracts em + a ('on the') before the feminine mesa — another of the constant preposition-plus-article fusions that make Portuguese sentences look shorter in writing than they are in underlying grammar.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers often pronounce the s in mesa as a hissing 's' sound, influenced by the spelling. Between two vowels in Portuguese, s is always voiced to a 'z' sound — this rule holds in both European and Brazilian Portuguese, but EU speech tends to keep every other vowel around it more reduced, so the whole word comes out clipped and quick rather than evenly paced.