Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

certo is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈsɛɦ.tu/. It means “right / correct.” SEH-too with an open first vowel, a breathy r, and a final o that raises to "oo."

SEH-too with an open first vowel, a breathy r, and a final o that raises to "oo."

certo /ˈsɛɦ.tu/

Front-stressed, which the -o ending delivers by default without any accent. The open quality of that stressed e goes entirely unmarked in the spelling, and there's no rule to derive it from — it simply travels with the word, the way it does in "nove" and "sete."

Listen: certo

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Sound it out

cer Soft c before the e, so an s. The vowel is open — jaw down, like "bet" — and the r closing the syllable is a light throat rasp rather than anything the tongue does.

to The t stays hard, since the vowel behind it is an o. That o then raises to "oo," so the word finishes on a quick, quiet "too."

Hear it in a sentence

Acho que você está certo.

I think you're right.

Listen: Acho que você está certo.

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"Acho que você está certo" opens with the hedging "acho que" that Brazilians use constantly. "Está" would normally shrink to "tá" in speech, and the adjective agrees with whoever you're addressing, so it becomes "certa" when you're telling a woman she's right.

Where English speakers slip

Using a closed "ay" in the first syllable makes the word drift toward a different vowel than Brazilians use — keep the jaw open. The r is the second issue, since "SER-toh" with an American r is the reflexive English reading. And there's a false-friend risk: "certo" means right or correct, while "certain" in the sense of some particular one is "certo" placed before the noun, as in "um certo dia."