Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

os is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /us/. It means “the (m. pl.).” OOSS. The masculine plural article raises its o to "oo," exactly as the singular does.

OOSS. The masculine plural article raises its o to "oo," exactly as the singular does.

os /us/

Unstressed by nature, leaning forward onto the noun it introduces. Its permanent lack of stress is what keeps the vowel raised to "oo." Portuguese requires the article far more often than English does, including before possessives — "os meus livros" is normal, where English would never say "the my books."

Listen: os

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Sound it out

o Unstressed, so it raises from "oh" to "oo" with the lips rounded. This is the same shift you get in the singular article and in every unstressed final o in the language.

s A clean hiss in most of Brazil, though carioca speakers turn syllable-final s into "sh." More importantly, it voices to a z whenever the next word begins with a vowel — an automatic linking rule you'll hear constantly.

Hear it in a sentence

Os meninos estão brincando.

The boys are playing.

Listen: Os meninos estão brincando.

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"Os meninos estão brincando" demonstrates the s-to-z linking twice over: "os meninos" keeps its s as a hiss before the m, but "meninos estão" turns that final s into a z before the vowel, giving "me-NEE-noo-zish-TOWNG." That single rule does a lot of work in making Portuguese sound connected rather than choppy.

Where English speakers slip

Saying "ohss" with a full "oh" is the reflexive reading and it sounds stilted in every sentence. Raise it. English speakers also fail to voice the s before vowels, producing a hard break between words where a Brazilian would glide through. And remember Portuguese demands articles in places English omits them entirely, so dropping "os" from a general statement is a grammar error as well as a rhythm one.