How to Pronounce 'Comer': Portuguese (Brazil) Pronunciation Guide

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

comer is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /koˈmeh/. It means “to eat.” koh-MEH. The final r is a breath of air from the throat, and many Brazilians barely pronounce it at all.

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

koh-MEH. The final r is a breath of air from the throat, and many Brazilians barely pronounce it at all.

comer /koˈmeh/

Every -er infinitive behaves this way: beber, escrever and aprender all throw their weight onto the last syllable, because a word ending in r is end-stressed by rule and needs no accent to announce it. Say koh-MEH with the second half clearly longer than the first.

Listen: comer

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Sound it out

co A hard k — c before o is always hard in Portuguese — and a short closed "oh." Unstressed, but keep the vowel rounded and present rather than letting it go slack.

me The stressed syllable, with a closed "eh" like the vowel in "they" minus the glide. This is where the weight and the pitch peak sit.

r In casual Brazilian speech this simply falls off — "comê" is what you'll usually hear. What survives, if anything, is a faint scrape of air at the back of the throat, and the tongue does nothing whatsoever.

Hear it in a sentence

Eu quero comer agora.

I want to eat now.

Listen: Eu quero comer agora.

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"Eu quero comer agora" chains three unstressed vowels across word boundaries, and Brazilians link right through them: "comer agora" comes out as though the r were connecting the words, "koh-MEH-ah-GO-ruh." When an infinitive's final r meets a following vowel like this, it survives as a light tap rather than dissolving.

Where English speakers slip

The English "er" ending is the killer — "koh-MER" with a curled tongue is unmistakably American and doesn't exist in Portuguese. Spanish learners overcorrect into a tapped or trilled r, which is also wrong for word-final position in Brazil. Aim for something between an h and silence. Watch the first vowel too: it's "koh," not the English "kuh" of "come."