Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

a vida is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /a ˈvi.dɐ/. It means “life.” ah VEE-dah. The d stays hard here — an a follows it, not an i.

ah VEE-dah. The d stays hard here — an a follows it, not an i.

a vida /a ˈvi.dɐ/

VEE-dah, and the second syllable is barely there. The word is a useful counter-example in the palatalization drill: it contains an i and a d side by side on the page, but in the order i-d rather than d-i, so nothing changes. Brazilian palatalization only fires when the i comes after.

Listen: a vida

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Sound it out

a A brief open vowel with no stress, handing straight over to the v.

vi A crisp v with teeth on lip and a stressed high "ee." Portuguese never softens v toward b, so this is a crisp fricative.

da A hard dental d, because the vowel behind it is an a. This is the crucial contrast with "dia," where an i triggers the change to "dj" — the letter before the d is irrelevant, only what follows counts.

Hear it in a sentence

A vida aqui é tranquila.

Life here is peaceful.

Listen: A vida aqui é tranquila.

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"A vida aqui é tranquila" links "vida aqui" so the noun's final "uh" runs into the adverb's opening "ah." "Tranquila" has a fully pronounced u after the q — because an i follows the u, not the q directly — plus a nasal in the first syllable, making it one of the trickier words in the sentence.

Where English speakers slip

Learners who have just mastered "dia" over-apply the rule and produce "VEE-djah," palatalizing a d that has no i after it. Keep it hard. The final a is the other issue, since English speakers flatten it into a schwa where Brazilians keep it audible.