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

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

ruim is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /huˈĩ/. It means “bad.” hoo-EENG. The initial r is a harsh h, and the word is two syllables with the stress on the nasal at the end.

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

hoo-EENG. The initial r is a harsh h, and the word is two syllables with the stress on the nasal at the end.

ruim /huˈĩ/

This is a hiatus rather than a diphthong, so the word splits ru-im with the stress on the final nasal — which is also what the rule predicts, since words ending in -im are stressed on the last syllable. Compare it with "sim," a single syllable, or with "mim": all three share the same stressed nasal ending.

Listen: ruim

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

Sound it out

r A word-initial r in Brazil is a throaty h, like the h in "house" but pushed harder from the back. It is emphatically not a trill and not an English r — this is one of the biggest differences from Spanish.

u A rounded "oo," unstressed, forming its own syllable. It does not glide into the i; there's a genuine break between them.

im The stressed syllable: a nasalized high "ee" with the m as a spelling marker only. The lips stay apart, and the sound ends while still resonating in the nose.

Hear it in a sentence

O tempo hoje está ruim.

The weather is bad today.

Listen: O tempo hoje está ruim.

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

"O tempo hoje está ruim" ends on that stressed nasal, and there's nothing after it to link into, so you hear the nasal resonance simply stop. "Tempo" gives you another nasal earlier in the sentence, and "hoje" has a silent h and a soft "zh" j — so the h you do hear in the sentence is the one written as r.

Where English speakers slip

Two big errors compete. First, the initial r: Spanish speakers trill it and English speakers curl it, when Brazilians make it a harsh h — "hoo-EENG," almost like clearing your throat. Second, the syllable count: reading "ui" as a diphthong gives a one-syllable "rweeng," which is wrong. And the comparative is irregular: worse is "pior," not "mais ruim."