LingoDrop
Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "problema" in Portuguese (Portugal)?
Say "proo-BLEH-muh", with the middle syllable clearly stressed and open, and the final "a" swallowed to a light "uh".
Stress is on the middle syllable "ble"; the initial unstressed "o" is pronounced like a short "oo", and the final "a" reduces to a light central "uh".
Listen: problema
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
Temos um problema sério.
We have a serious problem.
Listen: Temos um problema sério.
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
"Temos um problema sério" means "We have a serious problem." "Temos" is the first-person-plural present of ter (to have), and "sério" (serious) agrees in gender with the masculine noun "problema" — a good reminder that Portuguese nouns ending in "-a" aren't always feminine; "problema", like "tema" and "sistema", is grammatically masculine despite its "-a" ending.
Where English speakers slip
Because "problema" looks almost identical to its English cognate, learners tend to import the English stress pattern and vowel qualities wholesale, saying something close to the English word itself. European Portuguese reduces the surrounding unstressed vowels (the "o" to "oo", the final "a" to "uh") much more aggressively than English does, so leaning on the English pronunciation will sound noticeably foreign even though the word is easy to recognize on the page.