How to Pronounce 'Não': Portuguese (Brazil) Pronunciation Guide

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

não is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /nɐ̃w̃/. It means “no / not.” NOWNG — the vowel of "now" run entirely through your nose, in a single beat, with no g or n at the end.

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

NOWNG — the vowel of "now" run entirely through your nose, in a single beat, with no g or n at the end.

não /nɐ̃w̃/

A monosyllable, so it takes the stress by default, and the tilde is a nasalization mark rather than a stress mark. That distinction matters: unlike an acute or circumflex, a tilde says nothing about which syllable is loud. In longer words like "coração" the -ão still draws the stress, but that's because words ending in nasal diphthongs are final-stressed by rule, not because of the tilde itself.

Listen: não

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

Sound it out

n A plain n to start, tongue on the ridge behind the teeth. This one is a real consonant, unlike the n's and m's that merely mark nasality elsewhere in Portuguese.

ão The most characteristic sound in the language. Start with a nasalized central "a" — not the wide-open "ah" but a higher, more centralized version — and glide to a nasalized w. Both halves are nasal throughout, and the whole thing takes one beat. Crucially, the nasality runs alongside the vowel rather than following it as a separate consonant.

Hear it in a sentence

Não, obrigado.

No, thank you.

Listen: Não, obrigado.

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

"Não, obrigado" separates the two words with a comma, but in speech the nasal glide of "não" flows straight into the opening vowel of "obrigado" and colours it. In connected speech Brazilians also weaken "não" heavily before verbs — "num sei" for "não sei" is extremely common — so what you hear in conversation is often much shorter than what's written.

Where English speakers slip

The classic error is finishing with a hard consonant: "nown" or "nowng" with an audible g. There is no consonant at the end at all — the sound simply stops while still resonating in the nose. The other frequent slip is treating it as two syllables, "nah-oh," which sounds nothing like the fused single beat Brazilians produce. Spanish speakers importing "no" get an oral vowel with no nasality whatsoever, which is equally wrong.