Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

só is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /sɔ/. It means “only / just.” SAW, with a wide-open o like the vowel in "thought." The accent specifies that openness.

SAW, with a wide-open o like the vowel in "thought." The accent specifies that openness.

só /sɔ/

A monosyllable, so the accent isn't placing stress — it's specifying vowel quality and distinguishing this word from others of similar shape. Portuguese uses accents on short words for exactly this purpose, as in "pé," "pá" and "nós." The related suffix -zinho turns it into "sozinho," where the open vowel closes up under a shift of stress.

Listen: só

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Sound it out

s A clean initial hiss, unvoiced. It opens the word, so it never becomes a z — that only happens to a single s sitting between vowels.

ó The acute accent marks the vowel as open: jaw down, lips loosely rounded, closer to "law" than "low." A circumflex would have meant the closed variety, and Portuguese treats them as genuinely different sounds.

Hear it in a sentence

Eu só quero água.

I just want water.

Listen: Eu só quero água.

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"Eu só quero água" places the adverb before the verb, which is where Brazilians put it. "Quero" has a silent u after the q, and "água" has a fully pronounced one — the same two letters behaving oppositely in adjacent words, decided by the vowel that follows.

Where English speakers slip

Closing the vowel to "soh" shifts it away from what Brazilians say, and it also collides with "sou," meaning I am, which has exactly that closed quality. Keep the jaw down. The other issue is meaning: "só" covers both only and alone, so "estou só" and "só quero isso" use the same word for quite different jobs.