Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

o café is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u kaˈfɛ/. It means “coffee.” oo kah-FEH. Stress on the end, and the accented é is wide open like the vowel in "bet."

oo kah-FEH. Stress on the end, and the accented é is wide open like the vowel in "bet."

o café /u kaˈfɛ/

The accent moves the weight to the final syllable, which is a genuine exception — a word ending in -e would otherwise be stressed on the second-to-last. It also fixes the vowel as open. Compare "bebê," where a circumflex does the same stress job but specifies a closed vowel instead.

Listen: o café

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Sound it out

o Article, said "oo." It carries no stress and hands over to the k without any gap.

ca A k with no aspiration before the a, unaspirated, and an open "ah." Unstressed but fully pronounced — Brazilian Portuguese doesn't hollow this vowel out.

fé An f and an accented open e. The acute is telling you two things at once: the stress falls here, and the vowel is the wide, jaw-dropped kind rather than the tight "ay" a circumflex would have specified.

Hear it in a sentence

Quero um café com leite.

I want a coffee with milk.

Listen: Quero um café com leite.

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"Quero um café com leite" is the standard order, and "leite" is the word to watch: its final -te palatalizes to "tchee," giving LAY-tchee. "Com" contributes a nasal that runs straight into the l, so the phrase has a hum in the middle of it.

Where English speakers slip

Front-stressing it as "KAH-fay" gets both the rhythm and the vowel wrong. Push the weight to the end and open the jaw. Spanish speakers face a specific hazard: their "café" is stressed identically but its final vowel is neither as open nor as short. And in Brazil a "cafezinho" is the small strong cup you'll actually be offered.