Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

o parque is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u ˈpaɦ.ki/. It means “park.” oo PAH-kee. A rasped r in the middle, a silent u after the q, and a final e heard as "ee."

oo PAH-kee. A rasped r in the middle, a silent u after the q, and a final e heard as "ee."

o parque /u ˈpaɦ.ki/

The -e ending gives front stress by default. The word is a nice illustration that palatalization is consonant-specific: the final syllable has exactly the conditions that turn a t into "tch" or a d into "dj," but a k is unaffected and simply stays a k.

Listen: o parque

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Sound it out

par A p released without aspiration, a wide-open stressed a, and an r in coda position, coming out as a light throat rasp. The vowel does the work; the r is barely there.

que The u is silent before an e, leaving just a k, and the unstressed e behind it raises to "ee." Since a k isn't altered by a following i-sound, there's no palatalization — just "kee."

Hear it in a sentence

O parque fica perto de casa.

The park is near my house.

Listen: O parque fica perto de casa.

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"O parque fica perto de casa" uses "ficar" for location and "de casa" without an article, which is the fixed Portuguese pattern for home. "Perto" has an open stressed e and its own breathy r, so the sentence contains two syllable-final r's in three words.

Where English speakers slip

Sounding the u gives "PAR-kway," and adding an English r in the middle gives "PARK." Neither belongs. It's "PAH-kee." The raised final e is the third point — leaving it as "kay" is the reflexive reading and sounds distinctly non-Brazilian.