Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

dar is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /dah/. It means “to give.” DAH with a soft breath at the end. One syllable, hard d, and nothing an English speaker would call an r.

DAH with a soft breath at the end. One syllable, hard d, and nothing an English speaker would call an r.

dar /dah/

A one-syllable infinitive, stressed on the only vowel it has, unaccented in writing. It's worth distinguishing from the contraction "da" meaning "of the": that one is unstressed and slightly lighter, while the verb carries real weight in a sentence, and the r — however faint — is the audible difference between them.

Listen: dar

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Sound it out

da A dental d — tongue against the back of the upper teeth — and a wide-open "ah." No palatalization, since the vowel is an a rather than an i-sound.

r Barely produced in isolation, so the word often sounds like a bare "dah." It's a puff from the back of the mouth rather than any gesture of the tongue.

Hear it in a sentence

Vou dar um presente para ela.

I'm going to give her a gift.

Listen: Vou dar um presente para ela.

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"Vou dar um presente para ela" builds the future with "vou" plus an infinitive, which is how Brazilians actually talk. The r of "dar" runs into the nasal of "um" and firms up slightly, and "presente" ends with the palatalized "tchee" you now know to expect from any unstressed final -te.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers say "dar" as in "darling," curling the tongue, and Spanish speakers roll it. Neither is right — it's breath. There's also a usage point: Portuguese "dar" appears in dozens of idioms where English wouldn't use "give" at all, like "dar certo" for working out and "dar uma volta" for taking a stroll, so it's a far busier verb than its translation suggests.