Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

o gato is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u ˈga.tu/. It means “cat.” oo GAH-too. Hard g, wide-open stressed a, and a final o heard as "oo."

oo GAH-too. Hard g, wide-open stressed a, and a final o heard as "oo."

o gato /u ˈga.tu/

Nothing marked here: the first syllable takes it. The word is about as simple as Portuguese gets — two syllables, no nasals, no palatalization, no accent — which makes it a useful baseline for hearing what the raised final o actually sounds like on its own.

Listen: o gato

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Sound it out

ga Hard g, because an a follows — before an e or i the same letter would be a soft "zh." The vowel is wide open and stressed.

to A hard t made against the teeth and a last vowel lifted to "oo." No palatalization, since the vowel behind the t is an o rather than an i.

Hear it in a sentence

Meu gato dorme na cama.

My cat sleeps on the bed.

Listen: Meu gato dorme na cama.

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"Meu gato dorme na cama" uses "na," the contraction of em plus a. "Dorme" has a syllable-final r rendered as a rasp and a raised final e, and "cama" has that faintly raised a before its m — so three simple words carry three quiet Brazilian features.

Where English speakers slip

The only real trap is the ending: "GAH-toh" with a full "oh" is the reflexive reading and sounds bookish. Raise it to "oo." Spanish speakers have "gato" spelled identically and pronounced with an unraised final vowel, so the difference is small enough to slip past unnoticed for a long time.