Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

o irmão is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u iɦˈmɐ̃w̃/. It means “brother.” oo eeh-MOWNG. A breathy r in the middle and the -ão nasal diphthong at the end.

oo eeh-MOWNG. A breathy r in the middle and the -ão nasal diphthong at the end.

o irmão /u iɦˈmɐ̃w̃/

Words ending in the nasal diphthong -ão are end-stressed by rule, so the weight lands there and the tilde marks nasality rather than placement. The plural is "irmãos," which adds an s to the same diphthong — worth contrasting with words like "pão," whose plural is "pães" with a different nasal glide entirely.

Listen: o irmão

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

o "oo," running directly into the noun's initial "ee" — two very different vowels with no break between them.

ir A high "ee" with an r that shuts the syllable, realized as a light rasp from the throat. Unstressed, and the r contributes almost nothing audible — the vowel does all the work.

mão An m and then the -ão diphthong: a nasalized central a gliding to a nasalized w in a single beat. It carries the stress, and nothing closes it, so the word ends mid-resonance.

Hear it in a sentence

Meu irmão mora no Rio.

My brother lives in Rio.

Listen: Meu irmão mora no Rio.

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

"Meu irmão mora no Rio" links "meu irmão" across the w-glide into the vowel. "Rio" opens with the throaty h of a word-initial r, so it sounds like "HEE-oo" — and the sentence therefore contains two very different r's, one a faint rasp and one a full guttural.

Where English speakers slip

Finishing the -ão with an audible g is the standard error, and adding an English r in the middle is the other. Neither belongs. Spanish speakers reach for "hermano," which shares an ancestor but transfers nothing useful. And the plural forms are genuinely irregular across the -ão family, so they're worth learning word by word.