Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

o mar is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u ˈmah/. It means “sea.” oo MAH. One syllable, and the final r is a breath rather than a consonant.

oo MAH. One syllable, and the final r is a breath rather than a consonant.

o mar /u ˈmah/

A monosyllable ending in r, so the stress is automatic and unwritten. Portuguese uses "o mar" for the sea and "a praia" for the beach, and the two are not interchangeable — which matters in a country where both words come up constantly.

Listen: o mar

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Sound it out

o Article, said "oo," running straight into the m.

ma An ordinary m and a wide-open "ah." The m opens the syllable rather than closing one, so nothing nasalizes — the vowel is completely oral.

r Barely produced at the end of a word: a faint scrape from the back of the throat, and often nothing at all. Set it against the tap you'd hear in "mora" and the positional rule is obvious.

Hear it in a sentence

O mar está calmo hoje.

The sea is calm today.

Listen: O mar está calmo hoje.

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"O mar está calmo hoje" would clip "está" to "tá" in speech. "Calmo" contains a vocalized l — KOW-moo — and "hoje" has a silent h and a soft "zh," so the sentence contains a glide, a fricative and a vanishing r inside five short words.

Where English speakers slip

The English "mar" with a curled r is the reflex and the tongue movement gives it away instantly. Let the r evaporate. Spanish speakers tap or trill it, which is wrong for word-final position in Brazil. And note the gender: "mar" is masculine despite ending in a consonant, so it's "o mar" and "o mar azul."