Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

beber is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /beˈbeh/. It means “to drink.” beh-BEH. Two identical-looking syllables, but only the second is stressed and the final r is breath.

beh-BEH. Two identical-looking syllables, but only the second is stressed and the final r is breath.

beber /beˈbeh/

Unusually clean evidence of what stress alone does to a Portuguese syllable: "be" and "ber" hold the same consonant and the same vowel, and the only audible differences are length, loudness and the breath at the end. The weight goes on the second.

Listen: beber

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

Sound it out

be A b formed with the lips fully closing and a closed e. Unstressed, so keep it short — but Portuguese doesn't reduce it to a schwa, so the vowel stays a real "eh."

ber The same b and e as the first syllable, now stressed and therefore longer and louder. The r trailing off is the only thing besides weight that separates the two.

Hear it in a sentence

Bebo suco no café da manhã.

I drink juice at breakfast.

Listen: Bebo suco no café da manhã.

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

"Bebo suco no café da manhã" uses the present tense, stressed on the first syllable — "BEH-boo." "No" is a contraction of em plus o, and "café da manhã" is the fixed phrase for breakfast, literally morning coffee, ending on that stressed nasal ã released fully through the nose.

Where English speakers slip

Front-stressing it as "BEE-ber" gets both the rhythm and the first vowel wrong. Spanish speakers additionally soften the b's toward a v-like sound, which Portuguese never does — both b's here are firm stops with the lips genuinely closing. And in everyday Brazilian speech, "tomar" often replaces "beber" for drinks, so "vou tomar uma água" is far more natural than "vou beber uma água."