Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

onde is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈõ.dʒi/. It means “where.” ONE-djee. Nasal first vowel and a "djee" ending, so it rhymes with nothing in English.

ONE-djee. Nasal first vowel and a "djee" ending, so it rhymes with nothing in English.

onde /ˈõ.dʒi/

The nasal syllable carries the accent. Portuguese doesn't accent its question words the way Spanish does — there is no "ónde" — because the language relies on context and intonation rather than orthography to mark interrogatives, which is a small but consistent difference between the two.

Listen: onde

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Sound it out

on A closed o with air through the nose, carrying the weight. Rounded lips, and no n consonant is actually produced.

de The closing e comes out as "i," turning the d into "dj." The word ends on the sound that opens English "gee," arriving directly out of the nasal.

Hear it in a sentence

Onde você trabalha?

Where do you work?

Listen: Onde você trabalha?

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"Onde você trabalha?" needs no auxiliary verb and no word-order change: the question word plus a normal statement, with rising intonation doing the rest. "Trabalha" ends on an lh followed by a light final a, so the sentence closes softly after opening on a nasal.

Where English speakers slip

"ON-day" with a hard d and a full "ay" is the reflexive English rendering, and it misses both the nasal and the palatalization. Say "ONE-djee." Learners also forget the compound forms: "aonde" is used with verbs of motion — "aonde você vai?" — while "onde" covers static location.