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

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

a menina is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /a meˈni.nɐ/. It means “girl.” ah meh-NEE-nah. Same shape as "menino" but ending in a light "ah" instead of "oo."

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

ah meh-NEE-nah. Same shape as "menino" but ending in a light "ah" instead of "oo."

a menina /a meˈni.nɐ/

Second-to-last syllable, as the -a default requires, unmarked. The masculine and feminine forms are stressed identically, which is the general Portuguese pattern: changing a word's gender ending almost never moves its accent, so "menino" and "menina" differ in exactly one sound.

Listen: a menina

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

Sound it out

a The feminine article — and here it's doing real grammatical work, since swapping it for "o" would require changing the noun's ending too. Article and noun ending always agree.

me-ni Two syllables built on nasal consonants that nasalize nothing, because each one opens its own syllable. The stress lands on the "ni," so the high "ee" there is the longest sound in the word.

na A third n opening a third syllable, then a final a that lightens toward "uh." Unlike the masculine "-no," this ending doesn't raise — Brazilian unstressed a keeps its identity while unstressed o shifts to "oo."

Hear it in a sentence

A menina está com o pai.

The girl is with her father.

Listen: A menina está com o pai.

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

"A menina está com o pai" uses "com o" rather than a contraction, since "com" doesn't fuse with articles in standard writing. "Pai" is a single-syllable diphthong, and "está" would clip to "tá," so the sentence compresses considerably in speech.

Where English speakers slip

The final a gets reduced to a schwa by English speakers, making "menina" and "menino" harder to tell apart than they should be — keep that ending audible. There's also a register warning: "menina" is fine for a child, but calling an adult woman "menina" ranges from affectionate to patronizing depending entirely on who's speaking.