Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

o marido is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u maˈɾi.du/. It means “husband.” oo mah-REE-doo. One tapped r in the middle, and the final o raises to "oo."

oo mah-REE-doo. One tapped r in the middle, and the final o raises to "oo."

o marido /u maˈɾi.du/

Three beats, with the middle one loudest. There's no separate feminine form built from this root — the counterpart is "esposa" or "mulher" — which is a small irregularity in a language that usually pairs its kinship terms neatly, like filho/filha and irmão/irmã.

Listen: o marido

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Sound it out

o A rounded "oo" with no stress, which is exactly why the written o raises in the first place.

ma An m that opens a syllable and an open "ah." Nothing nasalizes here, since the m starts rather than closes the syllable.

ri A single r between vowels means one quick flick of the tongue tip, then the stressed high "ee." This is not the throaty h that a word-initial r would produce — position is everything.

do A hard d, since an o follows rather than an i, ending on "oo." The word fades out after its loud middle.

Hear it in a sentence

Meu marido está viajando.

My husband is traveling.

Listen: Meu marido está viajando.

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"Meu marido está viajando" uses the Brazilian present continuous with a gerund. "Viajando" has a soft "zh" in the middle and a nasal near the end, and "está" would clip to "tá" — so the spoken sentence is shorter and softer than the written one.

Where English speakers slip

The r attracts a roll from Spanish speakers and a curl from English ones, when it's a single tap. Leaving the final o unraised is the second habit. On usage, Brazilians also say "esposo" and increasingly "companheiro," so "marido" is common but not the only option you'll hear.