LingoDrop
Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "pai" in Portuguese (Portugal)?
Just say English "pie" — this one is a straightforward oral diphthong with no nasal sound at all.
A single syllable, so stress isn't in question; the main point is that, unlike "mãe", this diphthong is fully oral, not nasal.
Listen: pai
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
O meu pai trabalha muito.
My father works a lot.
Listen: O meu pai trabalha muito.
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
"O meu pai trabalha muito" uses "trabalha", third-person singular of "trabalhar" (to work), and "muito" as an adverb meaning "a lot" modifying the verb. Note "muito" here is invariable (it doesn't agree with anything) because it's acting adverbially rather than as an adjective describing a noun. Word order again mirrors English: subject, verb, adverb.
Where English speakers slip
Because "mãe" is nasal and "pai" looks similar on the page, learners sometimes nasalize "pai" too, or overcorrect the other way and clip the diphthong short. "Pai" should sound exactly like the English word "pie", fully oral — this is one of the few Portuguese sounds that maps almost perfectly onto an English word, and it's identical between European and Brazilian Portuguese.