Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

neve is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written [ˈnɛvɨ]. It means “snow.” Say "NEH-vuh", with an open stressed e and a final e that nearly disappears into a faint "uh".

Say "NEH-vuh", with an open stressed e and a final e that nearly disappears into a faint "uh".

neve [ˈnɛvɨ]

Stress is on the first syllable NE, with an open e sound; the final unstressed e reduces heavily, almost to silence, as is typical of European Portuguese word endings.

Listen: neve

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Sound it out

NE- Stressed and open, like the e in English "bed", clearly the loudest part of the word.

v A straightforward English-like v sound.

-e The final e is a near-silent, reduced "uh" — one of the clearest examples of European Portuguese's tendency to swallow unstressed word-final vowels.

Hear it in a sentence

A neve cobre as montanhas.

Snow covers the mountains.

Listen: A neve cobre as montanhas.

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"A neve cobre as montanhas" uses cobrir (to cover) in the third person, and as montanhas (the mountains) takes the plural definite article, matching the plural noun. This is a simple, common present-tense sentence structure useful as a model for other subject-verb-object descriptions of nature.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers tend to pronounce the final e clearly, something like "NEH-veh"; in true Lisbon pronunciation this final vowel almost vanishes, leaving something closer to "nev" with just a hint of a vowel — over-pronouncing it makes the word sound overly careful and non-native, and is one of the more common small errors for beginners.