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Are you confused by how to read Portuguese? If you know other Romance languages such as Spanish, Italian, or French, you’ll probably discover Portuguese to be a little bit more challenging in its pronunciation. At first glance, the language seems to be riddled with diacritics and with letters that do not always sound the same. But, with some background on how to pronounce letters and a plan to approach that new word, you’ll quickly be on your way to sounding like a local.

Although this single article can’t teach you all you need to know about Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation, it will give you a strategy to determine how to pronounce those words you don’t know.

The first thing to do is to take a look at where the stress occurs in the word. This is very important in figuring out how to pronounce vowels because while there are five written vowels “a, e, i, o, u”, there are eight vowel sounds that can occur when the the syllable is stressed. The letters “i” and “u” will always sound the same in the stressed position, but the vowels “a, e, o” can have two different sounds depending on which diacritic it carries. The acute accent “, , ” denotes one pronunciation and the circumflex accent “, , ” denotes another.

If you don’t see an acute or circumflex accent above a vowel, then you should follow the rules of determining natural stress in Portuguese. Take off any final “-s”, “-ns”, or “-m”. If what you have left ends in “-a”, “-o”, “-e”, the stress falls on the second-to-last syllable. But, if what remains is “-i”, “-u”, or a consonant, then the stress falls on the final syllable.

For example, the word coragem does not have an acute or circumflex accent. So, remove the “m” to give you “corage-“. Since this ends in a “-e”, that means the stress is on the second-to-last syllable and the word has stress on the “ra” syllable as in co-RA-gem. However, if the word were amendoim, then after removing the “m” you have “amendoi-” which means that the word is stressed on the final “im” syllable as in a-men-do-IM.

When you know where the stressed syllable is it becomes easy to determine the pronunciation of the other vowels. Because now you know that the other vowels are unstressed, you can predict their pronunciation quite easily. The “i” and “u” again will sound the same in all positions. And, while the vowels “a, e, o” each have two possible pronunciations, you know which one it will be depending on whether or not it occurs at the end of the word.

Next, you should check to see if the vowel is nasalized. Look for the letters “m” or “n”. If there is either consonant, check to see if it followed by another vowel. If so, then generally the vowel before is not nasalized such as the “e” in the word gemido. But, if the “m” or “n” is followed by another consonant or comes at the end of the word, the preceding vowel will become nasalized such as the “a” in ambos or the “e” in bem.

Once you figured out the vowels, all that’s left is pronouncing the consonants correctly. While it’s beyond the scope of this article to detail the pronunciation of all the consonants, note that some do change sound depending on which letters are their neighbors.

There are a few noteworthy consonant sound changes that are distinctly Brazilian Portuguese that we will discuss. The letter “l” changes at the end of a syllable or word to a sound like the “w” in the English word “wish”. So, Brasil becomes something like bra-zeew. Additionally, Brazilians pronounce the “d” and “t” differently when they precede the letter “i”, or the letter “e” at the end of a word. The “d” changes to a sound like the “g” in the English word “gym”. For example, balde sounds roughly like baw-jee. While, the “t” changes into a sound like the “ch” in the English word “chess”. So, the word botina sounds like boe-chee-na.

Hopefully, this approach will help you determine how to read any new Brazilian Portuguese words that you come across.To improve your pronunciation, there’s no need for classes. The best and most fun way to learn Brazilian Portuguese is to practice your pronunciation with native speakers. Practice reading aloud menu items or signs and see if your listener can understand you. Use tools like iPhone apps which integrate audio to help you hone your pronunciation. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to make mistakes! Have fun!

Check out PT Gardner’s blog and find out more about Brazilian Portuguese Pronunciation Guides.