Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

a calça is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /a ˈkaw.sɐ/. It means “pants / trousers.” ah KOW-sah. The l becomes a w and the ç is simply an s.

ah KOW-sah. The l becomes a w and the ç is simply an s.

a calça /a ˈkaw.sɐ/

No accent needed — the first syllable is loud by rule. Two separate spelling devices are at work in one short word: the cedilla, which overrides the default hard c before a back vowel, and the l, which the spelling keeps even though the sound has become a w. Portuguese orthography is conservative in both directions.

Listen: a calça

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

cal Hard k, a wide-open a, and an l that closes the syllable and therefore vocalizes fully to a w. The result rhymes with English "cow," and it carries the stress.

ça Without the hook this c would be a hard k, since an a follows — the cedilla exists precisely to prevent that and deliver an s. The last vowel then softens to "uh."

Hear it in a sentence

Comprei uma calça jeans.

I bought a pair of jeans.

Listen: Comprei uma calça jeans.

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

"Comprei uma calça jeans" uses the singular where English uses a plural — Portuguese counts trousers as one item, so "uma calça" is a pair. "Jeans" is borrowed whole from English and keeps something close to its English pronunciation, which is unusual.

Where English speakers slip

Sounding a real l and reading the ç as a k are the two errors, and they can happen together to produce something quite far off. It's "KOW-sah." The number is the grammatical trap: "uma calça" is one pair, and "duas calças" is two pairs, which reverses the English intuition.