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

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

dizer is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /dʒiˈzeh/. It means “to say / to tell.” djee-ZEH. The opening d becomes a "dj" because the very next sound is an i.

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

djee-ZEH. The opening d becomes a "dj" because the very next sound is an i.

dizer /dʒiˈzeh/

Say it dji-ZEH, with the first syllable barely a flick. The irregular forms pull it forward instead — digo, diz, disse are all front-stressed — but the palatalized d survives every one of those shifts, so "digo" comes out DJEE-goo.

Listen: dizer

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Sound it out

di The palatalization rule in its clearest form: d plus i gives the affricate at the start of "jeep." This happens even in a stressed-adjacent syllable, so it isn't limited to word endings.

ze A buzzing z and a closed e, and the weight falls here. The word therefore has two very different sibilant-ish sounds back to back, the "dj" and the "z."

r At the end of an infinitive this letter does almost nothing: a faint escape of air from the throat, gone before you notice it. Speakers who want it audible before a vowel let it become a quick tap instead.

Hear it in a sentence

Preciso te dizer uma coisa.

I need to tell you something.

Listen: Preciso te dizer uma coisa.

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"Preciso te dizer uma coisa" puts the object pronoun before the infinitive, which is standard Brazilian order. That "te" is itself palatalized to "tchee," so you get "tchee dji-ZEH" — two palatalized consonants in a row, a sound sequence that basically doesn't occur in European Portuguese and is instantly recognizable as Brazilian.

Where English speakers slip

Saying "dee-ZEHR" with a hard d and an English r gets both ends wrong. Brazilians say "djee-ZEH." Spanish speakers bring "decir," whose shape is different enough that the interference shows up mainly in the conjugated forms rather than the infinitive. Watch also for confusing "dizer" with "falar": Portuguese uses "falar" for speaking a language and "dizer" for reporting what someone said.