Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "a" in Portuguese (Brazil)?

Q: How do you pronounce a in Portuguese (Brazil)?

a is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /a/. It means “the (f.).” An open "ah," like the first sound in "father" clipped short. Unlike the masculine article, this vowel doesn't shift.

An open "ah," like the first sound in "father" clipped short. Unlike the masculine article, this vowel doesn't shift.

a /a/

Like its masculine counterpart, the feminine article is unstressed and leans on the noun that follows. Notice how differently the two behave phonetically: unstressed o raises to u, but unstressed a just stays a. That asymmetry is a real feature of the Brazilian vowel system, not an inconsistency in the rules.

Listen: a

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Sound it out

a A single open vowel with the jaw down and the tongue low. It stays a genuine "ah" even unstressed — Brazilian unstressed a lightens a little but doesn't change identity the way unstressed e and o do.

Hear it in a sentence

A casa é grande.

The house is big.

Listen: A casa é grande.

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"A casa é grande" runs the article straight into the noun with no break, and then "é" links into it too — "ah-KAH-zah-eh-GRAHN-djee." Note the s inside "casa" is voiced to a z because it sits between vowels, and "grande" ends with the nasal a plus the familiar "djee" palatalization.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers reduce it to "uh," importing the way our own indefinite article behaves, and the result sounds mumbled. It should be a clear "ah." There's also a spelling trap worth flagging: when the preposition "a" merges with this article you get "à" with a grave accent, pronounced identically but meaning something different grammatically — "vou à praia" versus "vejo a praia."