Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "amar" in Portuguese (Brazil)?

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

amar is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /aˈmah/. It means “to love.” ah-MAH. Two open vowels, weight on the second, and no r sound at the end.

ah-MAH. Two open vowels, weight on the second, and no r sound at the end.

amar /aˈmah/

A good test of whether the nasalization rule has sunk in: the m sits between two vowels and therefore opens a syllable, so neither a is nasal. Put that same letter at the end of a word and it would nasalize everything before it. The weight goes to "-mar."

Listen: amar

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Sound it out

a An unstressed open "ah" starting the word, with no consonant in front of it. Portuguese is comfortable beginning words with bare vowels and doesn't insert the glottal catch English uses.

mar The m opens this syllable rather than closing the one before it, which is exactly why neither a is nasal. The vowel is wide and loud; the r behind it is air.

Hear it in a sentence

Eu te amo muito.

I love you very much.

Listen: Eu te amo muito.

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"Eu te amo muito" uses the present tense and demonstrates the palatalized "te" — "tchee" — running straight into the vowel of "amo." "Muito" is the sneaky one: despite having no tilde, Brazilians pronounce it with a nasal first syllable, roughly "MWEEN-too," a genuine spelling irregularity.

Where English speakers slip

Learners nasalize the first syllable by association with words like "amanhã" or "ambos," producing "ahng-MAH." There's nothing nasal here. On the usage side, Brazilians reserve "amar" for genuinely strong feeling and use "gostar de" or "adorar" for everyday liking — saying "eu te amo" to a new acquaintance lands very differently than English "I love it" would.