Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

muito is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈmũj̃.tu/. It means “very / a lot.” MWEEN-too. The first syllable is nasal even though nothing in the spelling says so.

MWEEN-too. The first syllable is nasal even though nothing in the spelling says so.

muito /ˈmũj̃.tu/

The spelling marks where the accent falls and gives no hint at all of the nasalization. The word is invariable as an adverb, so "muito rápido" and "muito rápida" both work, but as an adjective it agrees: "muitos livros," "muitas casas."

Listen: muito

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

mui This is the famous irregularity: the vowel here is nasalized despite the complete absence of a tilde, an m or an n after it. Say "wee" through your nose after the m, giving something like "mween." It's the only common Portuguese word with an unwritten nasal.

to A hard t coming out of the nasal resonance, then "oo." Short, unstressed, and easy to swallow entirely.

Hear it in a sentence

Ele fala muito.

He talks a lot.

Listen: Ele fala muito.

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

"Ele fala muito" places the word after the verb, where it means "a lot" rather than "very." That positional split is worth internalizing: before an adjective it intensifies, after a verb it quantifies, and the pronunciation with its hidden nasal stays identical either way.

Where English speakers slip

Nearly every learner says "MWEE-too" with a clean oral vowel, because nothing in the spelling suggests otherwise, and Brazilians hear it immediately. Nasalize it. Spanish speakers have "muy" and "mucho" as separate words and often reach for one of them, when Portuguese uses this single word for both jobs.