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

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

o escritório is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u is.kɾiˈtɔ.ɾi.u/. It means “office.” oo iss-kree-TAW-ree-oo. Five syllables, accent on the third, and a wide-open stressed o.

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

oo iss-kree-TAW-ree-oo. Five syllables, accent on the third, and a wide-open stressed o.

o escritório /u is.kɾiˈtɔ.ɾi.u/

The weight falls three syllables back, and Portuguese writes an accent whenever it does. The reason it lands that far back is the final "io" splitting into two beats rather than forming a diphthong — the same structural fact that makes "família" and "história" proparoxytones and forces accents onto all three.

Listen: o escritório

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Sound it out

es Brazilians raise an unstressed initial e toward "i," so this opens "iss" rather than "ess" — the same shift you get in estar, escola and esperar.

cri Hard k with a single tap right behind it, then a short "ee." Keep the cluster tight; an inserted vowel would add a syllable to an already long word.

tó A hard t made against the teeth and an accented open o — jaw down, like the vowel in "thought." The acute marks both the stress and the openness.

rio A tapped r, then an i and an o each taking their own beat. The two vowels don't fuse, which is precisely why the word ends up stressed three syllables from the end.

Hear it in a sentence

O escritório fica no centro.

The office is downtown.

Listen: O escritório fica no centro.

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"O escritório fica no centro" links the article's "oo" into the raised "iss" of the noun. "Centro" has a soft c before an e and a nasal in the first syllable, so the sentence ends on a hum after a long run of clear, unreduced vowels.

Where English speakers slip

Squashing the ending into "TOR-yoo" costs a syllable and comes straight from Spanish, where "escritorio" genuinely has that shape. Portuguese keeps the i separate. Closing the stressed o is the second error, and reading the initial e as "ess" is the third.