Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

mal is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /maw/. It means “badly.” MOW, rhyming with "cow." The l becomes a w, which makes it sound identical to "mau."

MOW, rhyming with "cow." The l becomes a w, which makes it sound identical to "mau."

mal /maw/

One syllable, stressed by default, no accent. The l-final ending would place stress on the last syllable in a longer word, but here there's nothing to choose. The real complication is the homophone: because the l vocalizes, "mal" and "mau" are indistinguishable in speech and only the grammar of the sentence tells them apart.

Listen: mal

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Sound it out

ma An ordinary m and a wide-open "ah." The m doesn't nasalize anything here, since it opens the syllable rather than closing one.

l Closing the syllable, so it vocalizes fully to a w. That's why "mal" and "mau" are pronounced exactly alike in Brazil despite meaning different things — one is an adverb, the other an adjective.

Hear it in a sentence

Dormi mal esta noite.

I slept badly last night.

Listen: Dormi mal esta noite.

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"Dormi mal esta noite" uses the adverb after a verb, which is the giveaway that it's "mal" and not "mau" — adverbs modify verbs, adjectives modify nouns. The l then vocalizes into the following vowel of "esta," so the two words link as one smooth "MOW-ess-tah."

Where English speakers slip

Pronouncing a real l is the main phonetic error, and the mal/mau confusion is the main written one: Brazilians themselves get this wrong constantly, so learners are in good company. The test is simple — if you could substitute "bem," write "mal"; if you could substitute "bom," write "mau."