Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

por que is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /poh ˈke/. It means “why.” poh KEH. Two separate words, and the u after the q is silent.

poh KEH. Two separate words, and the u after the q is silent.

por que /poh ˈke/

The weight sits on "que," and that stress is what keeps its vowel a full closed e rather than raising it. Portuguese distinguishes four spellings that all sound similar: "por que" opens a question, "porque" answers one, "por quê" ends a question, and "porquê" is a noun. Only the last two carry circumflexes, marking a stressed final syllable.

Listen: por que

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

por A closed "oh" with an r rounding off the syllable as a rasp of breath. Unstressed — it leans forward onto the question word that follows.

que The u is silent before an e, leaving a plain k, and the vowel is a closed e. Here it's stressed, which is why it doesn't raise to "ee" the way the unstressed "que" of a relative clause does.

Hear it in a sentence

Por que você está rindo?

Why are you laughing?

Listen: Por que você está rindo?

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

"Por que você está rindo?" keeps the two words separate because they open the question. "Rindo" begins with the throaty h of a word-initial r and carries a nasal in the middle, so the sentence ends on a hum after opening with a breathy rasp — two very different uses of the letter r in one sentence.

Where English speakers slip

Voicing the u gives "por KWAY," which is what Spanish "por qué" encourages and what Portuguese never does before an e. The bigger problem is written: learners collapse all four spellings into one, and using "porque" to ask a question is the single most common orthographic error Brazilians themselves make.