Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "oi" in Portuguese (Brazil)?

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

oi is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /oj/. It means “hi.” OY — exactly the last two sounds of English "boy," packed into one beat. The danger is stretching it into two syllables.

OY — exactly the last two sounds of English "boy," packed into one beat. The danger is stretching it into two syllables.

oi /oj/

There's only one syllable, so placement isn't the issue — pitch is. Brazilians tilt "oi" upward as a greeting and let it fall flat when it means "huh?" The weight sits on the o, and the i just trails off the end of it.

Listen: oi

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Sound it out

o A pure closed "oh," the vowel in "boat" but clipped short and held steady — Portuguese doesn't let it drift and swell the way the English vowel does before it hands over to the glide.

i Not a vowel of its own here but a glide, the "y" tail of "toy." It rides on the back of the o and gets no beat of its own.

Hear it in a sentence

Oi, que bom te ver!

Hi, good to see you!

Listen: Oi, que bom te ver!

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In "Oi, que bom te ver!" the greeting runs straight into what follows with barely a breath. The word to watch downstream is "te": Brazilians say it "tchi," so the phrase lands as "tchi VEH" — that softening of t before an i-sound is one of the clearest Brazilian fingerprints in the whole language.

Where English speakers slip

Seeing two vowel letters, English speakers hand each one a beat and produce "oh-EE," which sounds stilted and childlike. It's a single fused sound. The other slip comes from Spanish: "hoy" has a similar shape but a much more open first vowel, and importing that gives you "ahy" instead of the rounder Brazilian "oy."