Portuguese (Portugal) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

vocês is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written [vuˈseʃ]. It means “you (plural).” Say 'voo-SEHSH', with the stress and a soft 'sh' landing on the second syllable, and the first 'o' shrunk to a quick 'oo'.

Say 'voo-SEHSH', with the stress and a soft 'sh' landing on the second syllable, and the first 'o' shrunk to a quick 'oo'.

vocês [vuˈseʃ]

Stress falls on the second syllable 'cês', which carries the accent and a closed vowel [e]; the unstressed first 'o' reduces toward [u], and the final 's' becomes 'sh' [ʃ].

Listen: vocês

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Sound it out

vo Unstressed first syllable — the 'o' reduces to a quick 'oo' [u] rather than a full 'oh'.

cê Stressed syllable with a closed 'e' vowel (like French 'é'), marked by the circumflex accent.

s Word-final 's' is pronounced 'sh' [ʃ], not a plain English 's'.

Hear it in a sentence

Vocês querem sumo?

Do you (plural) want juice?

Listen: Vocês querem sumo?

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'Vocês querem sumo?' uses 'vocês' as the plural 'you', paired with the third-person-plural verb form 'querem' — Portuguese grammatically treats 'vocês' as third person even though it means 'you all'. In European Portuguese, 'vocês' is the standard, neutral plural 'you' for groups, informal or not.

Where English speakers slip

Learners often stress the first syllable ('VO-ces') by analogy with English word stress patterns, when the stress must fall on 'cês'. They also commonly keep an English 's' at the end instead of the required 'sh' — both errors together can make the word hard for a native listener to parse quickly.