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

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

uma is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈu.mɐ/. It means “a / an (f.).” OO-muh. Note what's missing: unlike "um," this word has no nasal vowel at all.

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

OO-muh. Note what's missing: unlike "um," this word has no nasal vowel at all.

uma /ˈu.mɐ/

Ending in -a, the word stresses the second-to-last syllable — "u-" — by default, no accent needed. The contrast with "um" is instructive: same letters at the start, but adding a vowel after the m moves the m into the next syllable and de-nasalizes everything before it. Syllable boundaries do real phonetic work in Portuguese.

Listen: uma

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Sound it out

u A clean, oral, rounded "oo" — no nasality. Because the m that follows belongs to the next syllable, it doesn't nasalize this vowel, which is the crucial difference from the masculine "um."

ma A real m consonant, lips together, then a light final "uh." That final a is unstressed and slightly centralized but stays clearly audible, unlike the near-silent ending it would have in European Portuguese.

Hear it in a sentence

Tenho uma ideia.

I have an idea.

Listen: Tenho uma ideia.

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"Tenho uma ideia" links the nasal ending of "tenho" straight into the oral "oo" of "uma," so a listener hears the nasality trail off exactly as the article begins. "Ideia" then gives you an unstressed initial i and a stressed "ei" diphthong — and Brazilians pronounce it "ee-DAY-ah," with the d hard, since the vowel after it isn't an i.

Where English speakers slip

The dominant mistake is carrying the nasality over from "um" and producing a nasalized "OONG-muh." This word is fully oral. English speakers also weaken the final a to a schwa so thoroughly that it disappears; Brazilians keep it as a soft but present "uh." And there's a grammar dimension: use "uma" only with feminine nouns, so it's "uma ideia" but "um problema," the latter being a masculine noun despite ending in -a.