Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

ninguém is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /nĩˈgẽj̃/. It means “nobody.” neen-GAYNG. Two nasals, a hard g, and the accent forces the stress onto the last syllable.

neen-GAYNG. Two nasals, a hard g, and the accent forces the stress onto the last syllable.

ninguém /nĩˈgẽj̃/

The accent is overriding a default. Words ending in -em are normally stressed on the second-to-last syllable — "jovem," "ontem" — so without the acute you would read this as NIN-guem. The mark forces the weight onto the final nasal, exactly as it does in "também" and "alguém."

Listen: ninguém

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Sound it out

nin A real n opens the word, then an i turned nasal by the second n. Two n's, and only the first is a consonant.

gu The u is silent here, present only to keep the g hard before the e. Without it the spelling "nigém" would produce a soft "zh," so the u is doing structural work.

ém The accented nasal diphthong: a closed e gliding to a nasalized y, giving "ayng," with the acute marking this as the stressed syllable. Lips stay apart to the end.

Hear it in a sentence

Não tem ninguém aqui.

There's nobody here.

Listen: Não tem ninguém aqui.

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"Não tem ninguém aqui" is a double negative in the required Portuguese sense: "não" and "ninguém" reinforce rather than cancel. The final nasal of "ninguém" then links into the vowel of "aqui," which colours the start of that word with leftover nasal resonance.

Where English speakers slip

Letting the u be heard gives "neen-GWAYNG," which misreads a silent letter as a glide. Learners also close their lips on the final m and ignore the accent, front-stressing the word. The grammar adds a third layer: dropping "não" from the sentence — "tem ninguém aqui" — is wrong unless "ninguém" comes first.