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

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

trabalhar is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /tɾa.baˈʎah/. It means “to work.” trah-bah-LYAH. The lh is one palatal "ly" sound, and it belongs to the stressed syllable.

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

trah-bah-LYAH. The lh is one palatal "ly" sound, and it belongs to the stressed syllable.

trabalhar /tɾa.baˈʎah/

The lh opens the stressed syllable rather than closing the one before it — Portuguese treats it as a single indivisible consonant, so the split is tra-ba-lhar and never tra-bal-har. The weight lands on that final syllable, as it does in any r-final word.

Listen: trabalhar

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Sound it out

tra A t made against the teeth and a tapped r — one quick flick of the tongue tip — then an open "ah." In much of Brazil this cluster picks up a light "tch" colouring, so "tchrah" is a common variant.

ba A b with lips fully closing, then another open "ah." Unstressed but clear; three consecutive open a's give this word a distinctive flat, driving rhythm.

lhar The lh is a single palatal consonant made with the blade of the tongue against the roof of the mouth — Spanish ll, Italian gli. Then the stressed "ah" and a final r fading to breath.

Hear it in a sentence

Trabalho de segunda a sexta.

I work from Monday to Friday.

Listen: Trabalho de segunda a sexta.

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"Trabalho de segunda a sexta" uses the present tense, with stress on the second syllable: "trah-BAH-lyoo." "Segunda" and "sexta" are shortened weekday names — the full forms are segunda-feira and sexta-feira — and the x in "sexta" is one of the cases where that letter is a plain "s," so it's "SESS-tah."

Where English speakers slip

The lh is the make-or-break sound, and the standard failure is "trah-bahl-HAR" with a real l and an audible h in the middle. It's one fused sound with no l-release at all. The word also contains all three r-types no learner expects: a tap in the first cluster and a breath at the end, spelled with the same letter.