Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

o esporte is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u isˈpoɦ.tʃi/. It means “sport.” oo iss-POH-tchee. Raised initial e, a rasped r, and a "tchee" ending.

oo iss-POH-tchee. Raised initial e, a rasped r, and a "tchee" ending.

o esporte /u isˈpoɦ.tʃi/

Front of the second-to-last syllable, by the -e default. The word is a borrowing from English "sport," and Portuguese did what it always does with such imports: it added a vowel at the front to avoid an initial s-plus-consonant cluster, which the language doesn't permit. The same process gave us "escola" and "estudante."

Listen: o esporte

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Sound it out

es Brazilians raise an unstressed initial e toward "i," so this opens "iss" rather than "ess." It's the same habit that reshapes estar, escola and escritório.

por A dry p, a closed "oh" carrying the stress, and an r ending the syllable, heard as a light throat rasp.

te The closing e is heard as "i," which drags the t into "tch." The word therefore ends on the sound that opens English "cheese."

Hear it in a sentence

Meu esporte favorito é o futebol.

My favorite sport is soccer.

Listen: Meu esporte favorito é o futebol.

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"Meu esporte favorito é o futebol" links "meu esporte" across the w-glide into the raised "iss." "Futebol" then delivers a palatalized "tchee" in the middle and a vocalized l at the end, giving foo-tchee-BOW.

Where English speakers slip

Reading the initial e as "ess" and finishing with a hard t are the two standard errors. It's "iss" and "tchee." English speakers also try to drop the initial vowel entirely, reaching for something like "sporte" — but Portuguese phonology forbids a word starting with s plus a consonant, which is precisely why the vowel is there.