calling all beginners learning Portuguese this is an essential lesson if you want to master the building blocks for the whole Portuguese language I am of course talking about the alphabet how to correctly pronounce each letter and I'm even going to give you a word to go with each one this is going to be so useful if you need to spell something like your name in an official situation if you're moving here and you've got lots of documents that you need to get done you definitely want to avoid any confusion when you are doing spelling so
we're going to give you your own NATO alphabet to use even though there isn't an official one in Portuguese we've kind of made one up with some everyday words that people commonly use to describe these letters so this lesson is going to be super useful so let's get started with this very quick fire lesson our first letter is this is such a common name in Portugal that it's a really good one to use if you want to emphasize that you're saying the letter A that nasal sound in there it can be a little bit tricky
to pronounce if you need help with your pronunciation my free pronunciation guide is linked in the description go and get that if you need it but this is nice and simple C for dog so it's a really easy one to use this is a really common one that people use Evora is a place in Portugal in the Alentejo and it's really beautiful so if you've never been definitely go and check it out this is f for knife you might think it's going to be fork but it's not it's knife gato is cat so G for
cat nice and simple this one's a funny one this is how we're gonna say the letter H but also you need to remember that when we have an H in Portuguese it's going to be silent so there's actually not going to be much confusion if you're saying out loud the letter it's not we're not going to confuse it with another letter but we could say for the h is silent so it's kind of redundant now this one's a difficult one for people to get their head around because it sounds like our letter e right but
this is actually how we're going to pronounce an i in Portuguese so I for church a very important word in Portugal now this sound might be a little bit difficult for you to make but think about the words in English Pleasure Treasure we have that kind of sound so that's what a j is gonna sound like jota we would usually say jota de joão a very common name in Portugal just like Ana this one's a really good one to use but again look out for that nasal sound that ão is an l practice that one
next up we have Kappa now it's really important to note that there are a couple of letters in the alphabet that just don't exist in Portuguese they are k w and y which is why we have these kind of strange sounding names for those letters and we're not really going to find a Portuguese word that corresponds to that letter so we have Kappa and an example of a word would be something foreign like a kiwi the cute little fruit another nasal sound for you there I want you to be careful with pronouncing your L's in
Portuguese your tongue needs to be a bit further back in your throat rather than we have here right at the front of our mouth Portuguese L is a bit further back which is why we call it a dark L it's kind of more happening in our throat back here such a popular Portuguese name again this is a great way to distinguish that we're talking about the letter M which could easily be confused for many other letters including this is swimming and again by using a kind of longer word we're making it obvious which letter we're
saying often used in Portuguese cooking particularly arroz de pato if you've never tried it definitely go and check it out okay quando is the word for when and quite a lot of question words will begin with a Q so this is a good one to use ready for a difficult one now for this one you're gonna have to build up some friction in your throat if you're going to pronounce it as a Rrr or it could be a trilled rolled whichever sound you find easiest to make is fine to use this is a frog or
a toad which lots of you will recognize from being able to say to tudo bem? how are you now again this might be one that's a little bit difficult to get our head around because it sounds like a double O in English so this can often be confusing but this is actually how we're going to pronounce a u sound also how we pronounce O's when they're on the end of a word this is one of the tips that I talk about in my free lesson for beginners we dive into pronunciation a lot I'll link it
in the description in case anyone is interested in checking that out next but we can also refer to carne de vaca as beef as well so if you're at the butchers this is also something you might ask for there next we have one of those letters that does not exist in Portugal so we simply call it w it's basically W with a bit of a Portuguese accent and again it's going to be a non-Portuguese word that we would use for example X de xadrez this is the word for chess so if you like playing chess
this is one of the ways you can practice the letter X the final letter that doesn't really belong in the Portuguese alphabet is the letter Y so we refer to it as - so again you're only going to find non-portuguese words that are spelled with this letter the Portuguese will actually replace uh y with an i in words like yoga or yogurt so you're not really going to see a y around very much finally we have Ze they de zebra we all know what one of those is don't we so have you mastered it yet?
you can watch this video as many times as you need to pause and repeat the pronunciation of the letters and the words if you enjoyed this don't forget I do have a full hour-long lesson for beginners we tackle pronunciation basic grammar and also how to understand locals when they speak so it's linked in the description I would love to see you there I'll be back next week with more tips and tutorials to improve your confidence and conversation skills in Portuguese so make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss a thing tchau for now
