How to Pronounce 'O Aeroporto': Portuguese (Brazil) Pronunciation Guide

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

o aeroporto is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u a.e.ɾoˈpoɦ.tu/. It means “airport.” oo ah-eh-roh-POH-too. Five syllables, with the a and e refusing to fuse at the front.

How do you pronounce "o aeroporto" in Portuguese (Brazil)?

oo ah-eh-roh-POH-too. Five syllables, with the a and e refusing to fuse at the front.

o aeroporto /u a.e.ɾoˈpoɦ.tu/

Five syllables, and the fourth carries the accent. The word's length comes largely from that opening hiatus: "a-e" is two beats where an English reader would glide through in one, and Brazilian Portuguese keeps both fully audible rather than reducing either.

Listen: o aeroporto

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Sound it out

a An unstressed open "ah" opening the noun, standing as its own beat. It runs out of the article's "oo" with no break, giving three vowels in a row at the start of the phrase.

e A closed e taking its own separate beat. Portuguese builds diphthongs around an unstressed i or u, so an a followed by an e cannot fuse into one.

ro One quick tap of the tongue tip between vowels, then a closed "oh," unstressed. Not the throat-h a word-initial r would produce.

por An unaspirated p, a closed "oh" carrying the stress, and an r ending the syllable, heard as a light rasp. So the word holds a tap and a rasp two syllables apart.

to A hard t made against the teeth, with the o at the end climbing to "oo" as it always does in that position.

Hear it in a sentence

Chegamos cedo ao aeroporto.

We arrived at the airport early.

Listen: Chegamos cedo ao aeroporto.

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"Chegamos cedo ao aeroporto" links "ao aeroporto" so the fused preposition's w-glide runs straight into the noun's opening "ah." "Chegamos" opens with a "sh," and "cedo" has a soft c — so the sentence is gentle at the front and breathy at the back.

Where English speakers slip

Collapsing "a-e" into one syllable is the reliable error, giving four beats instead of five. Treating both r's alike is the second — one is a tap, one is breath. And English speakers reduce the three unstressed vowels into schwas, which Portuguese doesn't do.