Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

o mês is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u ˈmes/. It means “month.” oo MAYSS. The circumflex specifies a closed vowel — a tight "ay," not the open "eh" of "bed."

oo MAYSS. The circumflex specifies a closed vowel — a tight "ay," not the open "eh" of "bed."

o mês /u ˈmes/

A monosyllable, so the circumflex isn't placing stress — it's locking in the closed vowel, which would otherwise be ambiguous. The plural is "meses," where the accent disappears because the word now ends in -es and the default rule takes over, putting the weight on the second-to-last syllable anyway.

Listen: o mês

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Sound it out

o The masculine article raised to "oo," unstressed. It links onto the m directly, with no pause.

mê An ordinary m and a closed e — the vowel of "they" with the glide removed. The circumflex is there specifically to specify that closed quality on a one-syllable word.

s A clean final hiss that voices to a z whenever a vowel follows in the next word. So "o mês inteiro" comes out "oo may-zeen-TAY-roo."

Hear it in a sentence

Este mês foi difícil.

This month was hard.

Listen: Este mês foi difícil.

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"Este mês foi difícil" links "este mês" so the raised final "ee" of the demonstrative runs into the m. "Difícil" then ends the sentence on a vocalized l, and its opening di is palatalized to "djee" — so the sentence has a palatal at both ends and a glide in the middle.

Where English speakers slip

Using an open "eh" gives "MESS," which is the wrong vowel quality. The circumflex is telling you to keep it tight. Learners also drop the accent in writing, which is a genuine spelling error, and they forget that the plural loses it — writing "mêses" is wrong.