Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

o sapato is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u saˈpa.tu/. It means “shoe.” oo sah-PAH-too. Two open a's, and the final o comes out as "oo."

oo sah-PAH-too. Two open a's, and the final o comes out as "oo."

o sapato /u saˈpa.tu/

Stress goes to the middle syllable, by the -o default. The word is worth setting against "sapatos" in the plural, which is what you'll usually need — the added s doesn't move the accent, since pluralizing never shifts a Portuguese word's stress.

Listen: o sapato

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Sound it out

sa A hissed s — unvoiced, because it opens the word rather than sitting between vowels — and an open "ah," unstressed but fully pronounced.

pa A p made with no puff of air and a wide-open stressed a. Hold back the puff of air English adds after p, and let this vowel be the longest in the word.

to A hard t with the tongue on the upper teeth, with the last vowel lifted to "oo." No palatalization here, since the vowel behind the t is an o.

Hear it in a sentence

Meu sapato está apertado.

My shoe is tight.

Listen: Meu sapato está apertado.

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"Meu sapato está apertado" would clip "está" to "tá" in speech. "Apertado" carries a syllable-final r rendered as a rasp, so the sentence pairs the completely plain consonants of "sapato" against a breathy one immediately afterward.

Where English speakers slip

Leaving the final o as "oh" is the reflexive reading, and reducing the two unstressed a's into schwas is the quieter error beside it. Brazilians keep both a's clear. Spanish speakers have "zapato," whose initial consonant differs — Portuguese uses a plain s where much of Spain uses a th sound.