Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

quem is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /kẽj̃/. It means “who.” KAYNG. Silent u, and the -em ending is a nasal diphthong with no closing consonant.

KAYNG. Silent u, and the -em ending is a nasal diphthong with no closing consonant.

quem /kẽj̃/

A monosyllable, stressed by default and unaccented — and unlike Spanish "quién," Portuguese sees no need to mark its question words with accents. That's a systematic difference: Spanish uses orthographic accents to separate interrogatives from relatives, and Portuguese generally doesn't.

Listen: quem

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

Sound it out

qu Silent u before the e, so the word opens with a plain k. Portuguese is consistent about this: qu is "kw" before a and o, and just "k" before e and i.

em The nasal diphthong: a closed e gliding toward a nasalized y, giving "ayng." The lips stay apart throughout, and the sound stops while still resonating in the nose.

Hear it in a sentence

Quem está falando?

Who is speaking?

Listen: Quem está falando?

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

"Quem está falando?" uses the present continuous with a gerund, the Brazilian construction. In speech "está" clips to "tá," so the question becomes "quem tá falando?" — and the nasal of "quem" runs straight into that reduced verb with no break.

Where English speakers slip

Two errors stack: pronouncing the u to get "KWEM," and closing the lips at the end to get a real m. Neither belongs. It's "KAYNG," open-lipped and unresolved. Learners also try to inflect it for number, but "quem" is invariable — "quem são eles?" uses a plural verb with a singular-looking pronoun.