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Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "porquê" in Portuguese (Portugal)?
Say "poor-KEH" — stress the final syllable with a closed "eh" vowel, marked by the circumflex accent.
Stress falls on the final syllable "quê", closed and accented; this standalone/final-position form contrasts with unstressed "porque" (because), which is pronounced differently.
Listen: porquê
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
Porquê? O que aconteceu?
Why? What happened?
Listen: Porquê? O que aconteceu?
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"Porquê? O que aconteceu?" (Why? What happened?) shows "porquê" used standalone as a question, which in European Portuguese spelling takes the circumflex accent when it stands alone or ends a sentence, distinct from the unaccented "porque" used mid-sentence to mean "because" or in "porque" questions before a clause. "Aconteceu" is the preterite of "acontecer" (to happen), a useful irregular-feeling verb for describing past events.
Where English speakers slip
Learners often confuse "porquê" (why, standalone/accented), "porque" (because, or why mid-question), "por que" (why, two words, used in certain question structures), and "por quê" — a four-way spelling distinction that's a common source of writing errors even though pronunciation differences are subtler. For pronunciation specifically, the biggest error is stressing the first syllable instead of the correct final-syllable stress on "quê".