Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

mão is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written [ˈmɐ̃w̃]. It means “hand.” Say "mow" (rhymes with English "how") but push the whole sound through your nose.

Say "mow" (rhymes with English "how") but push the whole sound through your nose.

mão [ˈmɐ̃w̃]

One syllable, a nasal falling diphthong: an open, nasalized "a" glides into a nasal "w"-like offglide, all voiced through the nose at once.

Listen: mão

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Sound it out

m A plain English "m" as in "man".

ão A single nasal diphthong — say the vowel in English "how" but let the air escape through your nose the whole time, not just at the end.

Hear it in a sentence

Dá-me a tua mão.

Give me your hand.

Listen: Dá-me a tua mão.

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"Dá-me a tua mão" means "Give me your hand." "Dá-me" attaches the object pronoun directly to the imperative verb with a hyphen, a standard European Portuguese word order for commands; "tua" is the informal feminine possessive ("your"), agreeing with the feminine noun "mão".

Where English speakers slip

The single hardest sound for English speakers in this whole list: they tend to say a plain oral "mow" with no nasal quality, or split it into two syllables. The nasalization must run through the entire vowel, not just tack on at the end, and — unlike some Brazilian dialects that soften the offglide — European Portuguese keeps a fairly crisp, audible nasal "w" finish.