Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

saber is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /saˈbeh/. It means “to know (a fact).” sah-BEH, stress at the end, with the final r fading into breath.

sah-BEH, stress at the end, with the final r fading into breath.

saber /saˈbeh/

sah-BEH, with the weight thrown back. The irregular preterite "soube" abandons all of it — new vowel, new stress position, first syllable loud — which is typical of the small handful of very old, very common Portuguese verbs that never got regularized.

Listen: saber

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Sound it out

sa A hissed initial s and an open "ah." The vowel is unstressed but stays wide and clear — Brazilian Portuguese doesn't hollow out unstressed a the way European Portuguese does.

be A b with the lips coming fully together, then the stressed closed e. Portuguese distinguishes b and v strictly, unlike Spanish, where the two often merge — so this b must be a genuine stop.

r Nothing here for the tongue to do. The letter marks a place where breath leaves the throat and the word simply stops, and many Brazilians omit even that, ending on the vowel.

Hear it in a sentence

Quero saber a verdade.

I want to know the truth.

Listen: Quero saber a verdade.

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"Quero saber a verdade" links the r of "saber" into the article "a," strengthening it into a tap: "sah-BEH-rah." "Verdade" then closes the sentence with a breathy syllable-final r in the middle and the familiar "djee" palatalization at the end, so the sentence contains three distinct realizations of the letter r.

Where English speakers slip

The stress is the recurring problem — English speakers front-load it as "SAY-ber," which also gets the first vowel wrong. It's "sah-BEH." Spanish speakers bring their own "saber," which is spelled identically but has a fully pronounced final r and a softer b, so the transfer is close enough to be tempting and wrong enough to notice.