Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

o cavalo is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u kaˈva.lu/. It means “horse.” oo kah-VAH-loo. A true l in the middle, and the final o comes out as "oo."

oo kah-VAH-loo. A true l in the middle, and the final o comes out as "oo."

o cavalo /u kaˈva.lu/

Weight sits on the middle syllable, by the -o default. The l here is the point worth holding onto: Portuguese vocalizes l only when it closes a syllable, so an intervocalic one like this stays fully articulated, and the same letter in "cavalgar" would behave differently.

Listen: o cavalo

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Sound it out

ca A hard k before the a and an open "ah," unstressed but fully pronounced.

va A true v with teeth on lip and a wide-open stressed a. This is the loud centre of the word.

lo The l retains its full tongue-tip contact because it opens the syllable rather than closing one — a direct contrast with the vocalized l of "animal." The vowel behind it is heard as "oo."

Hear it in a sentence

O cavalo corre rápido.

The horse runs fast.

Listen: O cavalo corre rápido.

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"O cavalo corre rápido" gives you two throat-h sounds in a row: the double rr of "corre" and the initial r of "rápido." Against the tapped-free simplicity of "cavalo," that pairing makes a good contrast between the language's two r-families.

Where English speakers slip

Vocalizing the l — "kah-VOW-oo" — over-applies the rule to a position where it doesn't hold. Keep the tongue tip touching. Spanish speakers have "caballo," whose ll would be an lh in Portuguese, and importing that palatal sound produces a word Brazilians won't recognize.