How to Pronounce 'O Restaurante': Portuguese (Brazil) Pronunciation Guide

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

o restaurante is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u hes.tawˈɾɐ̃.tʃi/. It means “restaurant.” oo hess-tow-RAHN-tchee. The opening r is a throaty h and the middle r is a light tap.

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

oo hess-tow-RAHN-tchee. The opening r is a throaty h and the middle r is a light tap.

o restaurante /u hes.tawˈɾɐ̃.tʃi/

Five syllables in the noun, and the fourth is loud, which the -e default delivers without an accent. The word is a useful stamina test: four unstressed syllables surround one loud one, and Brazilian Portuguese keeps every one of those weak vowels clearly audible rather than crushing them, which is why the word takes longer to say than an English speaker expects.

Listen: o restaurante

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Sound it out

r Word-initial r in Brazil is friction from the back of the throat, close to a pushed English h. Spanish demands a trill in this position and English a curl; Brazilian Portuguese does neither.

es A closed e closed off by an s that stays a hiss for most Brazilians. Unstressed and quick, sandwiched between the guttural and the diphthong.

tau A t with the tongue right on the upper teeth and then "au," an open a gliding to a w — the vowel of "cow." One beat, still unstressed.

ran A single tap of the tongue tip, then an a that the n turns nasal. This is the loud syllable and the resonant centre of a long word.

te The e at the end lands as "i," palatalizing the t. Five syllables in, the word still finishes on the same "tchee" as "leite" and "noite."

Hear it in a sentence

Vamos jantar num restaurante.

Let's have dinner at a restaurant.

Listen: Vamos jantar num restaurante.

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"Vamos jantar num restaurante" uses "num," the contraction of em plus um, which Brazilians prefer to the written-out "em um." "Jantar" opens with a soft "zh" and its own nasal, so the sentence has a palatal fricative, a nasal and a guttural h all within four words.

Where English speakers slip

The initial r is the loudest error: trilling it is Spanish transfer, curling it is English. Make it an h. Learners also flatten the "au" into a plain "ah" and finish with a hard t. And the sheer length invites vowel reduction — resist it, because Brazilian Portuguese keeps unstressed vowels full.