Portuguese pronouciation help!

General Name Discussion
1

I am American and my husband’s family is Portuguese. We are having our first discussion tonight on what to name our third (a little girl). All our kids have Portuguese names. I am leaning toward [name]Beatriz[/name], although I’m not exactly sure how it is pronounced in Portuguese. I want to come to our “name meeting” prepared:-)

Some places I have seen the pronunciation as “[name]Bee[/name] ah triz”, and others I have seen “[name]Bay[/name] ah triz”. I have seen the nickname is spelled Bia; but is that “[name]Bee[/name]-ah” or “[name]Bay[/name] ah”. Forvo (www.forvo.com) definitely sounds [name]Bay[/name] ah trees to my ear, but [name]Beatriz[/name] Milhazes on Forvo sounds the other way. Confusing!

Thank you for your help

[name]Debra[/name]

P.S. I found this on a website, is it correct? approx English pronunciation for [name]Beatriz[/name]: B as in “be (B.IY)” ; IY as in “eat (IY.T)” ; [name]AH[/name] as in “hut (HH.[name]AH[/name].T)” ; T as in “tea (T.IY)” ; R as in “read (R.IY.D)” ; IH as in “it (IH.T)” ; Z as in “zee (Z.IY)”

2

[name]Every[/name] [name]Beatriz[/name] I’ve heard of has pronounced it “[name]BAY[/name]-uh-treez” or “bay-uh-TREEZ” But I don’t think any of them were Portuguese- they were mostly from Spanish-speaking Latin American countries. I wish I could help more, but I don’t know any Portuguese!

3

Spanish and Portuguese are pretty similar so I think [name]Beatriz[/name] is traditionally pronounced as “[name]BAY[/name]-ah-trees” with the “e” like an “a” sound and the “i” like an “e” sound.

4

Portuguese: [name_f]Bee[/name_f]-ah-treej and [name_f]Bee[/name_f]-ah would be the nn

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