Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

a casa is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /a ˈka.zɐ/. It means “house / home.” ah KAH-zah. The s in the middle buzzes as a z, because it sits between two vowels.

ah KAH-zah. The s in the middle buzzes as a z, because it sits between two vowels.

a casa /a ˈka.zɐ/

The ordinary rule lands on "ca-," so the noun needs no accent. The article matters here for a grammatical reason: "casa" drops it in a set of fixed phrases — "em casa," "para casa" — where Portuguese treats home as a concept rather than a building, exactly as English does.

Listen: a casa

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Sound it out

a A short open vowel carrying no stress of its own, handing over immediately to the k.

ca The c is hard before the a, unaspirated, and a wide-open stressed vowel. Holding back the puff of air English adds after k makes this sound noticeably more Portuguese.

sa A single s between two vowels is always voiced to a z in Portuguese, so this is "zah" and never "sah." The final a then lightens toward "uh" without vanishing.

Hear it in a sentence

Vou para casa agora.

I'm going home now.

Listen: Vou para casa agora.

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"A casa é grande" links the noun's final "uh" straight into the open vowel of "é," and the adjective then ends on a nasal plus the palatalized "djee." So the sentence starts with two clean oral vowels and finishes on a hum and a palatal.

Where English speakers slip

Pronouncing the s as a hiss — "KAH-sah" — is the standard error and it comes from reading rather than listening. Intervocalic s is z, without exception. Spanish speakers face this especially hard, since Spanish "casa" keeps an unvoiced s and the two words are spelled identically.