Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

falar is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /faˈlah/. It means “to speak / to talk.” fah-LAH. Two open vowels, stress on the second, and no r sound at the end that English would recognize.

fah-LAH. Two open vowels, stress on the second, and no r sound at the end that English would recognize.

falar /faˈlah/

fah-LAH, end-weighted, nothing to mark. This verb heads the -ar class, by far the largest and most regular group in Portuguese: learn these endings once and hundreds of verbs come free, comprar, trabalhar and amar among them.

Listen: falar

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Sound it out

fa An f and an open "ah." Unstressed but full — Brazilian Portuguese keeps unstressed a clear, so "fuh" would be wrong.

la The l here keeps full tongue-tip contact, because it starts a syllable rather than ending one — quite unlike the l in "legal" or "mil." Then the stressed wide-open vowel.

r Routinely dropped, so the word simply ends fah-LAH. It resurfaces as a tap only when the next word begins with a vowel.

Hear it in a sentence

Você fala português?

Do you speak Portuguese?

Listen: Você fala português?

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"Você fala português?" uses the conjugated form, where the stress has moved to the first syllable: "FAH-lah." That shift between infinitive and present tense is worth hearing directly. "Português" itself ends in a stressed closed e plus an s, and Brazilians link that s into a following vowel as a z.

Where English speakers slip

Beginners produce "FAH-lar" with English front stress and an audible r, getting both the rhythm and the ending wrong. The other confusion is semantic: use "falar" for speaking a language or talking to someone, and "dizer" for reporting words. "Ele falou que..." is common in speech, but "ele disse que..." is the tidier choice.