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

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

a mulher is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /a muˈʎɛh/. It means “woman.” ah moo-LYEH. The lh is one palatal sound, the stressed e is wide open, and the final r is a breath.

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

ah moo-LYEH. The lh is one palatal sound, the stressed e is wide open, and the final r is a breath.

a mulher /a muˈʎɛh/

End-stressed, which the r ending delivers without an accent. The word is worth learning alongside "melhor" and "velho": all three contain lh, and hearing them together builds the habit faster than meeting one every few weeks. The plural "mulheres" moves the stress to the new second-to-last syllable, which is a genuine shift.

Listen: a mulher

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Sound it out

a Open, unstressed, and immediately absorbed into the m that follows.

mu An ordinary m and a rounded "oo," unstressed. Keep the lips genuinely rounded — English would want to reduce this vowel and Portuguese doesn't.

lh One palatal consonant, the blade of the tongue pressed flat against the roof of the mouth — Spanish ll, Italian gli. There is no l-release before it and no h after it.

er An open e — jaw down, like "bet" — carrying the stress, with the r closing the syllable as a rasp of breath. The vowel is the loud part; the r barely registers.

Hear it in a sentence

Aquela mulher é minha vizinha.

That woman is my neighbor.

Listen: Aquela mulher é minha vizinha.

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"Aquela mulher é minha vizinha" ends with "vizinha," which contains both an intervocalic z and an nh — so the sentence gives you a palatal l and a palatal n a few words apart, plus a buzzing z in between. It's a compact tour of Portuguese palatals.

Where English speakers slip

"moo-LEHR" with an audible l and an English r misses both of the word's defining sounds. It's one palatal consonant and a breathy ending. Spanish speakers reach for "mujer," whose j is a throat sound entirely unlike the Portuguese lh. And the plural shift catches people out — "mulheres" is stressed differently from "mulher."