Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

forte is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈfɔɦ.tʃi/. It means “strong.” FAW-tchee. Open o, breathy r, and a "tchee" ending.

FAW-tchee. Open o, breathy r, and a "tchee" ending.

forte /ˈfɔɦ.tʃi/

No accent needed — "for-" is loud by rule. The open quality of that stressed o isn't written anywhere and has to be carried with the word — Portuguese only prints ó or ô when some other rule forces an accent, so most open-closed distinctions go unrecorded.

Listen: forte

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Sound it out

for An f, then an open o — jaw down, like the vowel in "thought" — and an r that shuts the syllable, realized as a soft rasp. The vowel is stressed and should feel wide and long.

te The final unstressed e raises to i, pulling the t into "tch." So the word ends on the sound that opens English "cheap," not on a hard "teh."

Hear it in a sentence

Esse café é bem forte.

This coffee is really strong.

Listen: Esse café é bem forte.

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"Esse café é bem forte" uses "bem" as an intensifier meaning quite or really, which is extremely common in Brazil. It's a nasal "bayng," so the sentence puts a nasal diphthong immediately before the open o of "forte" — a nice contrast between a nasal and a fully oral vowel.

Where English speakers slip

The ending is the usual casualty: "FOR-tay" keeps a hard t and a full "ay" where Brazilians say "tchee." The r is the second, since it's breath rather than an English r. And note that "forte" is invariable for gender, so "uma mulher forte" needs no change — unlike most adjectives.