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

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

querer is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /keˈɾeh/. It means “to want.” keh-REH. The qu is a plain k with a silent u, and the middle r is a single tap.

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

keh-REH. The qu is a plain k with a silent u, and the middle r is a single tap.

querer /keˈɾeh/

keh-REH, end-weighted. None of the conjugated forms repeats that rhythm: "quero" is front-stressed QUEH-roo and "quer" collapses to a single syllable, so the infinitive's shape is an island within its own paradigm.

Listen: querer

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Sound it out

que The u is silent before an e, so this is just "keh" with a closed vowel. If the u were meant to be heard, Portuguese would write a diaeresis — an old convention now abolished, which makes qu unambiguously silent-u before e and i.

re A single r between vowels is a light tap of the tongue tip, and this syllable is the stressed one. The e is closed again, so the two syllables have the same vowel quality despite the different stress.

r Softened to breath and usually skipped entirely in relaxed speech. So the word carries two r's spelled identically and pronounced nothing alike: a tap in the middle, air at the end.

Hear it in a sentence

Ela não quer sair.

She doesn't want to go out.

Listen: Ela não quer sair.

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"Ela não quer sair" uses the third-person form, and "quer sair" runs two r-final syllables together so the middle of the phrase is almost pure vowel and breath. "Sair" itself is two syllables — sa-IR — with the stress on the second, because the i and the a don't form a diphthong here.

Where English speakers slip

Letting the u speak gives "kweh-REHR," and that error usually arrives paired with an English r at the end. Neither belongs. The two r's are the real lesson: the internal one is a quick tap, the final one is breath, and treating them identically is the giveaway. Spanish speakers additionally roll the middle r, which is too strong for a single intervocalic r in Portuguese.