Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

quente is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈkẽ.tʃi/. It means “hot.” KEN-tchee. The u is silent, the first vowel is nasal, and the ending is "tchee."

KEN-tchee. The u is silent, the first vowel is nasal, and the ending is "tchee."

quente /ˈkẽ.tʃi/

The nasal syllable takes the weight. The word doesn't inflect for gender either, so "água quente" and "café quente" both work unchanged, which is typical of adjectives ending in -e.

Listen: quente

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Sound it out

que Before an e, the u in qu goes silent and the pair is just a k. Contrast "quatro," where the u before an a is fully pronounced as a w — the following vowel decides.

n Present to nasalize the preceding vowel, not to be pronounced itself. You should hear resonance in the nose rather than the tongue hitting the ridge behind the teeth.

te The e at the end lands as "i," which palatalizes the t. This is the same ending as sete, vinte, noite and gente — one pattern, a great deal of vocabulary.

Hear it in a sentence

A sopa está quente.

The soup is hot.

Listen: A sopa está quente.

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"A sopa está quente" would be "a sopa tá quente" in speech. Notice that Portuguese uses "estar" here rather than "ser": the soup is hot right now, a temporary state, and using "ser" would suggest hotness is part of its permanent identity.

Where English speakers slip

Give the u a voice and you get "KWEN-tay," which adds a glide and keeps a hard t at the end. Both need fixing. The n is the third issue, since giving it full consonant value flattens the nasal vowel into an ordinary one. Spanish speakers reach for "caliente," a completely different word, when improvising.