Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

o relógio is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u heˈlɔ.ʒi.u/. It means “watch / clock.” oo heh-LAW-zhee-oo. A throaty h at the front, a soft "zh," and four syllables.

oo heh-LAW-zhee-oo. A throaty h at the front, a soft "zh," and four syllables.

o relógio /u heˈlɔ.ʒi.u/

The stress sits three syllables back, which Portuguese signals with an accent every time. The cause is the final "io" splitting into two beats rather than gliding, the same structure that forces accents onto "escritório" and "história."

Listen: o relógio

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Sound it out

r Word-initial r in Brazil is friction from the back of the throat, close to a firmly pushed English h. No trill and no curl — this is the sound learners most often get wrong.

ló The l is fully articulated, tongue tip up since it opens the syllable, and the accented o is wide open — jaw down, like the vowel in "thought." The acute marks both stress and openness.

gio Before an i the g is a soft "zh," and then the i and o each take their own beat. The two vowels don't fuse, which is precisely why the word is stressed so far back.

Hear it in a sentence

Meu relógio parou.

My watch stopped.

Listen: Meu relógio parou.

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"Meu relógio parou" ends with "parou," whose -ou flattens to a plain "oh" in Brazil. It also contains a tapped r between vowels, which contrasts directly with the throat-h opening "relógio" — the same letter, two realizations, in adjacent words.

Where English speakers slip

Trilling the initial r is the Spanish error, and squashing the ending into "ZHOO" is the other. Give the i and o separate beats. Spanish speakers have "reloj," which is shorter, ends in a consonant and has a throat-j — so almost nothing about it transfers.