How to Pronounce 'Poder': Portuguese (Brazil) Pronunciation Guide

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

poder is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /poˈdeh/. It means “to be able to / can.” poh-DEH, weight on the second syllable. Both consonants stay hard, and the final r is breath.

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

poh-DEH, weight on the second syllable. Both consonants stay hard, and the final r is breath.

poder /poˈdeh/

Push the weight to poh-DEH; front-stressing it produces something that isn't the infinitive. Curiously, the identical spelling also works as a noun meaning power — "o poder" — since Portuguese nominalizes its infinitives freely, and the two are pronounced exactly alike.

Listen: poder

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Sound it out

po A crisp, breathless p and a closed "oh." Unstressed but not reduced — English speakers want to say "puh" here, and Portuguese keeps the vowel rounded and clear.

de A dental d that stays hard because the vowel after it is a closed e rather than an i, followed by that stressed closed e. This is a useful counterexample to the palatalization rule.

r Commonly dropped, leaving the word to end on its vowel. Whatever else you do, the tongue must not curl the way it does in English "powder" — that single gesture is what marks the accent.

Hear it in a sentence

Você pode repetir?

Can you say that again?

Listen: Você pode repetir?

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"Você pode repetir?" uses the conjugated form rather than the infinitive, and notice the stress has moved to the first syllable — "POH-djee" — with the d now palatalized because the final e has raised to i. Comparing "poder" and "pode" side by side shows how much a Portuguese verb changes shape between forms.

Where English speakers slip

The English instinct is "POH-der" with front stress and a curled r, which gets both the rhythm and the ending wrong. Push the weight to the end and let the r dissolve. Learners also confuse "poder" with "saber": Portuguese uses "saber" for knowing how to do something learned, like swimming, and "poder" for being permitted or physically able, and the split doesn't match English "can" at all.