Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

nunca is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈnũ.kɐ/. It means “never.” NOON-kah, with the first vowel humming through the nose and no separate n consonant.

NOON-kah, with the first vowel humming through the nose and no separate n consonant.

nunca /ˈnũ.kɐ/

NOON-kah, with the weight up front. The word takes part in Portuguese double negation, which is obligatory rather than optional: "não vou nunca" and "nunca vou" are both correct, but two negatives never cancel each other out the way English grammar books insist they should.

Listen: nunca

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

Sound it out

nun The first n is a genuine consonant opening the word; the second is a nasalization marker for the u. So the same letter does two different jobs three sounds apart, which is a nice illustration of how positional Portuguese spelling is.

ca A dry hard k before the a, arriving straight out of the nasal resonance, and then a closing a that softens toward "uh" without vanishing.

Hear it in a sentence

Nunca fui ao Rio.

I've never been to Rio.

Listen: Nunca fui ao Rio.

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

"Nunca fui ao Rio" starts with the negative, which lets the sentence drop "não" entirely. "Ao" is the fused preposition and article, a single "ow" beat, and "Rio" opens with the throaty h that a word-initial r always produces in Brazil — so the city's name sounds like "HEE-oo."

Where English speakers slip

Pronouncing both n's fully gives "NUN-kah" with a clattery middle, where Brazilians have a hum. Only the first n is a consonant. The bigger structural issue is double negation: learners suppress the second negative out of English habit, producing "não vou algum lugar" instead of the correct "não vou a lugar nenhum."