Portuguese (Brazil) · Pronunciation Guide

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

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

um is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ũ/. It means “a / an (m.).” OONG, hummed through the nose, with no m ever closing at the end.

OONG, hummed through the nose, with no m ever closing at the end.

um /ũ/

One syllable, unstressed in normal use since it's an article leaning on a noun. It's worth contrasting with "uma," the feminine form: there the m is followed by a vowel, so it becomes a real m consonant starting the next syllable, and the u stops being nasal entirely. One letter's position changes everything.

Listen: um

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Sound it out

u A rounded "oo" vowel, lips pushed forward. It picks up nasality from the m that follows, so the nose is involved from the very beginning of the sound rather than at the end.

m A spelling instruction, not a consonant. It tells you the u is nasal. Portuguese uses m before p and b and at the end of words, and n elsewhere, purely as an orthographic convention — the actual pronunciation is nasalization either way.

Hear it in a sentence

Quero um café.

I want a coffee.

Listen: Quero um café.

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"Quero um café" runs the nasal straight into the k of "café" without a break, so it sounds like "KEH-roong-ka-FEH." The nasal resonance actually colours the beginning of the next word. Notice also that "quero" starts with qu before an e, so the u is silent and it's simply "keh."

Where English speakers slip

English speakers close their lips and say "oom," which adds a consonant that isn't there. Keep the lips apart and let the sound stop while it's still resonating in the nose. The other confusion is with "um" as the number one versus the article — they're the same word, and Portuguese doesn't distinguish them, so "um café" can mean either "a coffee" or "one coffee" depending on emphasis.