Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

a praia is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /a ˈpɾaj.ɐ/. It means “beach.” ah PRY-ah. A tapped r in the cluster, an "ai" diphthong, and a separate final "ah."

ah PRY-ah. A tapped r in the cluster, an "ai" diphthong, and a separate final "ah."

a praia /a ˈpɾaj.ɐ/

The accent, unwritten, sits on the first syllable, with "ai" counting as one syllable. The word is a good test of Portuguese diphthong logic: the i glides because it's unstressed and follows the stressed a, while the final a can't glide onto anything and therefore stands alone.

Listen: a praia

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Sound it out

pr A p with none of the English puff with a single tap right behind it. Keep them glued together — an inserted vowel would add a syllable that isn't there.

ai An open a gliding to a y, the vowel of "high." One beat, and it carries the stress.

a A final a taking its own separate beat and lightening toward "uh." It doesn't merge with the y-glide before it, so the word is two syllables.

Hear it in a sentence

Passamos a tarde na praia.

We spent the afternoon at the beach.

Listen: Passamos a tarde na praia.

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"Passamos a tarde na praia" uses "na," the em-plus-article contraction, and "tarde" gives you a rasped r plus the palatalized "djee." "Passamos" has an unvoiced double s, so the sentence contains a hiss, a rasp, a palatal and a tap in five words.

Where English speakers slip

Squashing the ending into one syllable gives "PRY," which loses a beat, and breaking the pr cluster gives "puh-RY-ah," which adds one in the wrong place. Learners also confuse "praia" with "mar": the beach is "a praia" and the sea is "o mar," and Brazilians don't use them interchangeably.