Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

país is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written [pɐˈiʃ]. It means “country.” Say "puh-EESH", two syllables (the accent breaks the vowels apart), ending in a soft "sh" sound.

Say "puh-EESH", two syllables (the accent breaks the vowels apart), ending in a soft "sh" sound.

país [pɐˈiʃ]

Stress falls on the final syllable "ís", marked with an accent precisely to prevent the "ai" from merging into a diphthong — this makes "país" two syllables (pa-ís), not one.

Listen: país

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Sound it out

pa Unstressed first syllable, reduced to "puh".

í Stressed, a clear "ee" — the accent's main job is to force this vowel to be its own syllable rather than blending with the preceding a into a diphthong.

s Word-final s is pronounced "sh", so the word ends in a soft hiss, not a hard English "s".

Hear it in a sentence

Portugal é um país pequeno.

Portugal is a small country.

Listen: Portugal é um país pequeno.

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"Portugal é um país pequeno" places "pequeno" after the noun it modifies, agreeing in masculine singular with "país". "Um" is the masculine indefinite article. As with other "ser" sentences describing a country's inherent characteristics, "é" is the natural choice over "está", which would suggest a temporary state.

Where English speakers slip

Learners often mispronounce this as one syllable, gliding "pa" and "í" together like the diphthong in "pai" (father) — the written accent exists precisely to signal that these vowels stay separate here. The other common miss is the word-final s: it must come out as "sh", giving "pa-EESH" rather than a hard "pa-EES", consistent with the general European Portuguese pattern of softening syllable-final and word-final s.