How to Pronounce 'A Amiga': Portuguese (Brazil) Pronunciation Guide

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

a amiga is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /a aˈmi.gɐ/. It means “friend (female).” ah ah-MEE-gah. Two identical vowels in a row at the start, which Brazilians merge into one longer sound.

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

ah ah-MEE-gah. Two identical vowels in a row at the start, which Brazilians merge into one longer sound.

a amiga /a aˈmi.gɐ/

The "mi" is loud, exactly as in the masculine. The interesting wrinkle is the doubled vowel at the phrase boundary: Portuguese normally elides identical adjacent vowels in speech, so "a amiga" and "amiga" can sound nearly the same, and only context tells you whether an article was spoken.

Listen: a amiga

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Sound it out

a a The article and the noun's first vowel are both open "ah," and in speech they collapse into a single slightly lengthened vowel. Portuguese doesn't insert anything between them — this is the smoothest possible word boundary.

mi A lip-closing m opening a syllable and a stressed high "ee." Because the m starts rather than closes the syllable, the vowel in front of it stays completely oral.

ga Hard g before the a, then a final a relaxing toward "uh." The g stays hard throughout the feminine form just as it does in the masculine, since both endings are back vowels.

Hear it in a sentence

Minha amiga mora em Recife.

My friend lives in Recife.

Listen: Minha amiga mora em Recife.

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"Minha amiga mora em Recife" replaces the article with a possessive, which resolves the doubled-vowel problem entirely. "Mora" has a tapped r between vowels, and "Recife" opens with the throaty h of a word-initial r — the same letter, two completely different sounds, four words apart.

Where English speakers slip

Learners either pronounce both a's as two separate beats, which sounds robotic, or drop the article altogether, which is a grammar error. Merge them into one slightly longer vowel. The g is a second point: English speakers sometimes soften it before the i they see later in the word, but the vowel immediately after the g is what counts, and it's an a.