Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

ouvir is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /oˈvih/. It means “to hear / to listen.” oh-VEE. The ou at the front is a plain "oh" — no "oo" after it — and the final r is breath.

oh-VEE. The ou at the front is a plain "oh" — no "oo" after it — and the final r is breath.

ouvir /oˈvih/

The weight sits on the "vee." This is an -ir verb, smallest of the three infinitive families, and an irregular one: "ouço" swaps the consonant outright and drags the stress to the front, so the infinitive predicts very little about the rest of the paradigm.

Listen: ouvir

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Sound it out

ou Brazilian Portuguese collapses this two-letter spelling into a single closed "oh." It's a historical diphthong that flattened centuries ago in most of the language, so pronouncing both letters sounds archaic or hyper-careful.

vi A clear v and a high "ee." This is the stressed syllable, so give it length; the unstressed "oh" before it should be noticeably shorter.

r Faint or absent. Set it against the fully-articulated tap you'd hear inside a consonant cluster and the positional rule becomes obvious.

Hear it in a sentence

Não ouço nada.

I can't hear anything.

Listen: Não ouço nada.

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"Não ouço nada" gives you the irregular present form, pronounced "OH-soo," with a ç that is simply an s. The sentence also demonstrates Portuguese double negation — "não" and "nada" together — which is required rather than optional, unlike English where two negatives cancel.

Where English speakers slip

Pronouncing the ou as "oo" gives "oo-VEER," which is wrong at both ends. It's "oh" at the front and breath at the back. Learners also confuse "ouvir" with "escutar": both cover hearing and listening, but "ouvir" leans toward passive perception and "escutar" toward deliberate attention, roughly the way English splits hear and listen.