Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

o urso is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u ˈuɦ.su/. It means “bear.” oo OO-soo. Article and noun both start rounded, and the r is a rasp.

oo OO-soo. Article and noun both start rounded, and the r is a rasp.

o urso /u ˈuɦ.su/

The opening syllable is the loud one. The article-plus-noun sequence is unusually slippery: "o urso" gives you three rounded vowels in a row with a rasp and a hiss between them, and in fast speech the article can vanish into the noun almost entirely.

Listen: o urso

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Sound it out

o The article, raised to "oo" — and since the noun also begins with a u, the two run together as a single sustained rounded sound with only a slight stress bump to separate them.

ur A rounded "oo" carrying the stress, with an r at the syllable's end, reduced to a light throat rasp. The vowel is what you hear; the r is barely there.

so A hissed s — unvoiced, because it follows a consonant rather than sitting between vowels — with an "oo" where the page shows an o.

Hear it in a sentence

O urso dorme no inverno.

The bear sleeps in the winter.

Listen: O urso dorme no inverno.

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"O urso dorme no inverno" pairs two words with syllable-final r's — "urso" and "inverno" — both rendered as rasps. "No" is em fused with the article, and "inverno" opens with a nasal, so the sentence hums once in the middle of all that breath.

Where English speakers slip

"UR-soh" with an American r is the reflexive rendering and the tongue movement gives it away. Let it become breath. Learners also separate the article from the noun with a hard break, when Brazilians glide the two rounded vowels together. And the s must stay a hiss — it doesn't voice, because no vowel precedes it.