Actually in Portuguese the 2 words are phonetically very different. Abacaxi is pronounced ah-bah-kah-SHEE, whereas ananás is pronounced ah-nah-NAHS (depending

Actually in Portuguese the 2 words are phonetically very different. Abacaxi is pronounced ah-bah-kah-SHEE, whereas ananás is pronounced ah-nah-NAHS (depending on the region, the tailing "s" takes the sound of "sh" which is slightly closer but still pretty far). Note that in Portuguese proper pronounciation of the tonic syllable is very important, and in this case the tonic gives each word a very distinct sound.