Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

por is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /poh/. It means “for / by / through.” POH, one syllable, ending in a soft breath rather than any kind of r consonant.

POH, one syllable, ending in a soft breath rather than any kind of r consonant.

por /poh/

One syllable, stressed by default, no accent. It contracts with the definite articles into pelo, pela, pelos, pelas — forms whose l comes from an older Portuguese article and which no longer look anything like their source. Those contractions are stressed on their own first syllable and behave like ordinary two-syllable words.

Listen: por

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Sound it out

po A dry p and a closed rounded "oh." Portuguese p has no puff of air, so it sounds crisper and drier than the English one.

r Barely audible even in careful speech: a whisper of friction from the back of the mouth, then nothing. The instruction here is mostly negative — no curling, no tapping, no trilling.

Hear it in a sentence

Obrigado por tudo.

Thanks for everything.

Listen: Obrigado por tudo.

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"Obrigado por tudo" is a fixed phrase where "por" sits unstressed between two content words and almost disappears. "Tudo" ends in the raised final o, so it's "TOO-doo," and the t stays hard because the vowel after it is a u rather than an i — a useful reminder that palatalization is triggered specifically by i-sounds.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers say "pour" or "poor," both with a curled American r, and it's the most audible foreign-accent marker in the phrase. Let the r evaporate into breath. There's also a persistent confusion with "para": "por" covers cause, exchange and movement through, while "para" covers destination and purpose, and mixing them up is the most common preposition error learners make.