How to Pronounce 'Obrigado': Portuguese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce obrigado in Portuguese?

Obrigado is pronounced oh-bree-GAH-doo, with the stress on the third syllable. In IPA it is written /obɾiˈɡadu/. The final o sounds like 'oo,' not the English 'oh,' and the r in the middle is a quick tongue tap, not the throaty Portuguese r people usually associate with the language.

How do you pronounce "obrigado" in Portuguese?

oh-bree-GAH-doo, stress on the third syllable. In IPA: /obɾiˈɡadu/. The tricky parts are the final o, which sounds like "oo" and not "oh," and the r, which is a light tap rather than the growly Portuguese r you may have heard elsewhere.

obrigado /obɾiˈɡadu/

Four syllables: o-bri-GA-do. The third syllable carries the weight; the rest stay short and unaccented.

Listen: obrigado

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Sound it out

Portuguese spelling is fairly reliable once you know the local rules, and "obrigado" only really has two traps: what happens to an unstressed final o, and which of Portuguese's two very different r sounds shows up here.

o A short, closed "oh," clipped off quickly, not the drawn-out "oh" of English "go."

bri The r is a quick flick of the tongue tip, close to the "tt" in the American "butter." It's the light r, not the throaty one.

GA The stressed syllable. A hard g, as in "go," followed by an open "ah." Give it more length and a touch more volume than the rest.

do In Brazilian Portuguese, an unstressed final o is pronounced "oo," so this syllable lands as "doo," not "doh."

Hear it in a sentence

Muito obrigado pela ajuda.

Thank you very much for the help.

Listen: Muito obrigado pela ajuda.

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"Muito" in front of "obrigado" works the same way "very much" does in English, it takes a plain thank you and makes it warmer, the kind of thing you'd say after someone genuinely went out of their way for you.

One thing worth knowing: "obrigado" agrees with the speaker's own gender, not the listener's. A man says "obrigado" no matter who he's thanking, and a woman says "obrigada." It's not a formality setting, it just changes with who's talking.

Where English speakers slip

The final o is the biggest giveaway. English speakers read Portuguese spelling through an English lens and give every o the same open "oh" sound, so "obrigado" comes out "oh-bree-GAH-doh." In Brazilian Portuguese, an unstressed o at the end of a word tightens into "oo," so the correct ending is closer to "doo." Say the word out loud ending on an "oo" and it will already sound noticeably more native.

The other slip is the r. Portuguese has two genuinely different r sounds, a light tongue tap and a harsher, throat-based one (the sound you hear at the start of "Rio" or in a double rr). Learners who've picked up on that harsher r from other words sometimes drag it into "obrigado" too, but the r here sits inside the cluster "br," which Portuguese always pronounces as the light tap, never the throaty version.