Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

o mundo is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u ˈmũ.du/. It means “world.” oo MOON-doo. The first vowel hums through the nose and the last raises to "oo."

oo MOON-doo. The first vowel hums through the nose and the last raises to "oo."

o mundo /u ˈmũ.du/

The accent lands on the nasal beat. Both vowels are rounded, which gives the word an unusually uniform colour — the only real contrast between its two syllables is that one resonates in the nose and the other doesn't.

Listen: o mundo

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Sound it out

o Raised to "oo," brief and unstressed before the noun's nasal opening.

mun An unremarkable m opening the word and a rounded u humming through the nose. Lips forward, tongue down, and the n is a spelling marker only.

do A hard d out of the nasal, then "oo." So the word travels from a nasal rounded vowel to an oral one without changing lip shape.

Hear it in a sentence

Quero viajar pelo mundo.

I want to travel the world.

Listen: Quero viajar pelo mundo.

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"Quero viajar pelo mundo" uses "pelo," the fused por-plus-article contraction that no longer looks anything like its source. "Viajar" has a soft "zh" and a vanishing r, so the sentence moves from a palatal fricative into the nasal of "mundo."

Where English speakers slip

Giving the n full consonant value produces "MUN-doh," which flattens the nasal and leaves the final o unraised. Nasalize and raise. Spanish speakers have "mundo" spelled identically, with a real n and an unraised o, so the transfer feels natural and is wrong on both counts.