The orthography of Portuguese is based on the Latin alphabet, and makes use of the acute accent, the circumflex accent, the grave accent, the tilde, and the cedilla, to denote stress, vowel height, nasalization, and other sound changes. Brazilian Portuguese also uses the diaeresis mark. Accented letters and digraphs are not counted as separate characters for collation purposes. The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... The acute accent ( Â´ ) is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin and Greek scripts. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... The grave accent ( ` ) is a diacritic mark used in written Greek until 1982 (polytonic orthography), French, Catalan, Welsh, Italian, Vietnamese, Scottish Gaelic, Norwegian, Portuguese and other languages. ... The tilde (~) is a grapheme with several uses. ... A cedilla is a hook (¸) added under certain consonant letters as a diacritic mark to modify their pronunciation. ... In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis given to certain syllables in a word. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that air escapes partially or wholly through the nose during the production of the sound. ... Brazilian Portuguese is a collective name for the varieties of Portuguese written and spoken by virtually all the 180 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a couple million Brazilian immigrants and temporary workers in other countries, mainly in Canada, United States, Portugal, Paraguay and Japan. ... In linguistics, a, diaeresis, or dieresis (AE) (from Greek (diaerein), to divide) is the modification of a syllable by distinctly pronouncing one of its vowels. ... A diacritic mark or accent mark is an additional mark added to a basic Greek διακρητικός, distinguishing and diacritical is used to mean distinguishing or distinctive. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In textual criticism and bibliography, collation is the reading of two (or more) texts side-by-side in order to note their differences. ...

Letters

In the following, pronunciations with an asterisk beside them have dialectal variants, or special allophones in certain phonetic environments. Only the most frequent sounds are given, since a listing of all cases and exceptions would be too cumbersome. See Portuguese phonology, for more details on those variants. The phrase "at the end of a syllable" can be understood as "before another consonant, or at the end of a word". For the letter r, "at the start of a syllable" means "at the beginning of a word, or after l, n, s". The names of the letters are masculine. In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ... Below is a sketch of the phonology and orthography of Portuguese. ... A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. ...

• The semivowel allophones /i̯ u̯/ of /i u/ occur in diphthongs.

• The pronunciations /ɐ/, /i, ɨ/, and /u/ for the vowels a, e, o occur mostly in unstressed syllables.

• The nasal vowels /ɐ̃ ẽ ĩ õ ũ/, which can be considered allophones of /a e i o u/, occur mostly before a nasal consonant, m or n, followed by another consonant, or before final m.

• The pronunciation of most consonants is fairly straightforward, and similar to French or Catalan pronunciation. The letter h is silent; it appears only at the start of a word for etymology or tradition, in a few interjections, and as part of the digraphs ch, lh, nh. Only these digraphs and the letters r, s, x, and z may require special attention.

• The letter g before e or i, and the letter j, are pronounced as in French.

• The sound /ɾ/ is normally the alveolar tap found in many other Romance languages. For the pronunciation of /ʁ/, see Guttural R in Portuguese.

• At the end of a syllable, the choice between s, x and z is mostly a matter of etymology or tradition. Phonetically, they have the same value. In this environment, the letter x is normally preceded by e; and the letter z only occurs at the end of oxytone words and in a few compounds.

• The traditional pronunciation of the letter x before a vowel is /ʃ/ (like "sh" in English). However, between vowels, in loan words from Latin or Greek, it may denote other sounds: [ks] (the most common), [z] (in words that begin with ex- or hex- followed by a vowel, and in compounds made from such words), or [s] (in a very small number of words, such as trouxe and próximo).

Semivowels (also called semiconsonants or glides) are vowels that function phonemically as consonants. ... In phonetics, a diphthong (Greek and ending tongue positions. ... In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis given to certain syllables in a word. ... A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through the mouth and the nose. ... Catalan IPA: (català ) is a Romance language, the official language of Andorra and co-official in the Spanish autonomous communities of Balearic Islands, Valencia (under the name Valencian) and Catalonia. ... Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ... It has been suggested that Discourse particle be merged into this article or section. ... The alveolar tap or flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ...

Digraphs

The digraph ch stands for the palato-alveolar consonant written "sh" in English. The digraphs lh and nh, of Occitan origin, denote palatal consonants which do not exist in English, but can be approximated by li, ni in words such as million, onion, pronounced quickly. Some other sequences of letters have special pronunciations at syllable or word boundaries, due to assimilation. See Portuguese phonology: assimilation. Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate (the place of articulation for... Occitan, or lenga dòc, or languedoc, is a Romance language (or group of languages), spoken mainly in the Languedoc or Occitania region in southern France. ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Below is a sketch of the phonology and orthography of Portuguese. ...

Accented letters

The nasal variants below occur mostly before the nasal consonants m, n, followed by another consonant.

Diacritics

Portuguese makes use of six diacritics. A diacritical mark or diacritic, sometimes called an accent mark, is a mark added to a letter to alter a words pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. ...

The cedilla in ç indicates that it is pronounced /s/. By convention, s is written instead of etymological ç at the beginning of words. A cedilla is a hook (¸) added under certain consonant letters as a diacritic mark to modify their pronunciation. ... Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ...

The acute accent (á, é, í, ó, ú) and the circumflex accent (â, ê, ô) indicate that a vowel is stressed, and also the quality of the stressed vowel, more precisely its height: the stressed vowels á, é, ó are low, while the stressed vowels â, ê, ô are high. (Except in some word final graphemes. See below.) They also distinguish a few homographs: cf. para "for" with pára "it stops", por "by" with pôr "to put". The acute accent ( Â´ ) is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin and Greek scripts. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis given to certain syllables in a word. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. ... A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. ... A grapheme designates the atomic unit in written language. ... A homonym is one of a group of two or more words that have the same phonetic form (i. ...

The tilde (ã, õ) marks nasal vowels before other vowels, at the end of words, or before final -s. It usually coincides with the stressed vowel, unless there is an acute or circumflex accent elsewhere in the word, or if the word is compound, e.g. órgão "organ", irmãzinha "little sister" (diminutive, irmã + zinha). The tilde (~) is a grapheme with several uses. ... A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through the mouth and the nose. ... A compound is a word (lexeme) that consists of more than one free morpheme. ... A diminutive is a formation of a word used to convey a slight degree of the root meaning, smallness of the object named, intimacy, or endearment. ...

The grave accent (à) indicates the contraction of two consecutive vowels in adjacent words (crasis), normally the preposition a and an article or a demonstrative pronoun: a + aquela = àquela "to that", a + a = à "to the", and so on. It does not mark stress. The grave accent ( ` ) is a diacritic mark used in written Greek until 1982 (polytonic orthography), French, Catalan, Welsh, Italian, Vietnamese, Scottish Gaelic, Norwegian, Portuguese and other languages. ... Crasis is the contraction of a vowel or diphthong at the end of a word with a vowel or diphthong beginning the following word. ...

The trema (ü) indicates that the letter u is pronounced, exceptionally, in the graphemes gue, gui, que, qui; e.g. agüentar "to bear", freqüência "frequency", argüição "questioning", qüinqüelíngüe "in five languages" (conjectured to be the Portuguese word with most diacritics). It is only used in Brazil, and increasingly omitted (some newspapers and many people don't use it). Ä ä Ö ö Ãœ ü The umlaut mark (or simply umlaut) and the trema or diaeresis mark (or simply diaeresis) are two diacritics consisting of a pair of dots placed over a letter. ...

Graphemes with special values at the end of words

The following graphemes represent nasal diphthongs at the end of words, or before final -s. The pronunciations marked with an asterisk have dialectal variants.

All accented graphemes are stressed. The final grapheme -am appears in polysyllabic verb forms, and is always unstressed.

Status of K, W, Y

The letter y was never used consistently in medieval Portuguese. During the Renaissance, some authors reintroduced it in words of Latin or Greek origin, for etymology, or as a semivowel in falling diphthongs, like in Spanish. The Portuguese spelling reform of 1911, and the later spelling convention signed between Portugal and Brazil in 1931, however, abolished etymological spellings and decreed that the semivowel y should be written i, since it is an allophone of the vowel /i/. Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ...

The letters k and w were always uncommon in Portuguese spelling, although they appeared occasionally in some proper nouns. Nevertheless, the use of these three letters is allowed in hybrid words derived from foreign names, such as keynesiano and newtoniano, listed even in the most authoritative Portuguese dictionaries. They are sorted as in English.

Letter names

The names of the extra letters are:

K: cá in Brazil, capa in Portugal;

W: dáblio / double u (the English name) in Brazil and Portugal, or duplo vê in Portugal;

Y: ípsilon, ípsilo or i grego in Brazil and Portugal; also ipsilão or ipsilone in Brazil.

Spelling of personal names

Family names are exempt from the above restrictions. Thus, a foreigner who emigrates to a Portuguese speaking country and whose family name has one of these letters does not have to change its spelling. A family name, or surname, is the part of a persons name that indicates to what family he or she belongs. ...

In Brazil, these letters are also widely accepted for given names, in all official records and documents. In fact, those three letters are quite popular in made-up first and middle names, such as Waldirci and Deyvide, or in the names of Japanese-Brazilians, such as Satiko and Yojiro. Family names have often retained their pre-1940 spellings — in particular, final y was retained in many names of native (chefly Tupi-Guarani) origin, such as Guaracy. A given name is a word which specifies and differentiates between members of a group of individuals, especially a family, all of whose members usually share the same family name. ... 1940 (MCMXL) was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1940 calendar). ... The indigenous people of Brazil (povos indígenas in Portuguese) comprise a large number of distict ethnic groups who inhabited the countrys present territory prior its discovery by Europeans around 1500. ... Guaraní (gwah-rah-nee) [gwarani] (local name: avañeẽ) is a language spoken in Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and southwestern Brazil. ...

However, the use of diacritics in personal names is generally restricted to the letter-diacritic combinations above, and often also by the applicable Portuguese spelling rules. So, for example, a Brazilian birth registrar may accept Niccoló, Schwartz, or Agüeiro; but he is likely to object to Niccolò, Nuñez, Molière, or Gödel, and possibly even to Çambel or Qadi.

Portugal is more restrictive than Brazil in what concerns given names. They must be of Roman, Jewish (Biblical), or Arabic origin, taken from a list fixed by law. However, in the wake of increased immigration (especially from Eastern European countries), a regime of exception has been instituted for immigrants. The main reason given by Portuguese authorities to justify these restrictions is that an unusual name may lead to discrimination in school by other children, a thesis that was backed by some psychological studies.

Other symbols

Apostrophe

The apostrophe (') appears as part of certain phrases, usually to indicate the loss of a vowel in the contraction of a preposition with the word that follows it: de + amigo = d'amigo. It is mostly only used in poetry.

Hyphen

The hyphen (-) is used to make compound words, especially animal names like papagaio-de-rabo-vermelho "red-tailed parrot". It is also extensively used to append clitic pronouns to the verb, as in quero-o "I want it" (enclisis), or even to embed them inside the verb, as in levaria + te + os = levar-tos-ia "I would take them to you" (mesoclisis). Proclitic pronouns are not connected graphically to the verb: não o quero "I do not want it". In linguistics, a clitic is a word that syntactically functions as a free morpheme, but phonetically appears as a bound morpheme; it is always pronounced with a following or preceding word. ...

Hyphenation

Portuguese hyphenation rules require a syllable break between double letters cc, cç, mm, nn, rr, ss, or other combinations of letters which may be pronounced as a single sound, e.g. fric-ci-o-nar, pro-ces-so, car-ro, ex-ce-to, ex-su-dar. Only the digraphs ch, lh, and nh are indivisible. All digraphs are however broken into separate letters for the purposes of collation, aloud spelling, and in crossword puzzles. A hyphen ( - ) is a punctuation mark. ... Proper spelling is the writing of a word or words with all necessary letters and diacritics present in an accepted, conventional order. ... Crossword is a game. ...

Stress and accentuation

Below are the general rules for the use of the acute accent and the circumflex in Portuguese. Primary stress may fall on any of the three final syllables of a word, but occurs mainly on the last two. A word is called oxytone if it is stressed on its last syllable, paroxytone if stress falls on the syllable before the last (the penult), and proparoxytone if stress falls on the third syllable from the end (the antepenult). Most words are stressed on the penult. In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis given to certain syllables in a word. ... Paroxytone is a linguistic term for a word with stress on the penultimate syllable, that is, the syllable before the last syllable, , the English word canasta. ... Generally speaking, the penult is the next to the last item in a series but it most specifically means the next to the last syllable in a word. ... Proparoxytone is a linguistic term for a word with stress on the antepenultimate syllable, that is, the last but two, the English words acromegaly and operational. ... The antepenult is the third syllable from the end of a word (ex. ...

Monosyllables

Monosyllables are typically not accented, but those that end in -a, -as, -e, -es, -o, -os, or -em may require an accent mark:

• The following clitic articles, pronouns, prepositions, or contractions are not accented: a, as, da, das, la, las, lha, lhas, ma, mas, na, nas, ta, tas. Note that most of these words have a masculine equivalent, also unaccented: o(s), do(s), lo(s), lho(s), mo(s), no(s), to(s) (see below). All other monosyllabic words that end in a or as take an acute accent on the final a, except for the contractions of the preposition a "to" with the articles a, as "the", which take the grave accent, à, às "to the" (singular and plural, respectively).
• Monosyllables ending in -o or -os are not accented if the final o is pronounced /u/ (as in English "do"). Otherwise, they are accented.
• Monosyllables ending in -e or -es are not accented if the final e is pronounced /i/ (as in English "be") or /ɨ/ (approximately as in English "roses"). Otherwise, they are accented.
• The 3rd. person plural forms of the verbs ter and vir, têm and vêm, are accented to be distinguished from the 3rd. person singular of the same verbs, vem, tem. Other monosyllables ending in em are unaccented.
• The verb pôr is accented, to be distinguished from the preposition por.

In linguistics, grammatical genders, also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once. ...

Polysyllables

The accentuation of words with two or more syllables is usually determined by their ending:

• Most words ending in a close vowel, i, u, is, us, a simple nasal vowel, ã, im, om, um, ãs, ins, ons, uns, one of the nasal diphthongs written ãe, ão, õe, ães, ãos, ões, or a consonant other than s or m, are stressed on their last syllable. Therefore, words with these endings only require a graphic accent if they are paroxytones or proparoxytones.
• Most other polysyllabic words ending in a, e, o, as, es, os, am, em, ens are stressed on the penult. Words with these endings only require a graphic accent if they are proparoxytones or oxytones. The endings em and ens take the acute accent when stressed (contém, convéns), except in 3rd. person plural forms of verbs derived from ter and vir, which take the circumflex (contêm, convêm).
• All proparoxytone words are accented.
• Hiatuses whose second vowel is stressed i or u take an acute mark, so that they will not be pronounced as diphthongs, when the syllable to which the stressed vowel belongs is i, u, is or us.
• The stressed diphthongs ei, eu, oi take an acute accent on the first vowel whenever it is low.

Aside from these cases, there are a few more words that take an accent, usually to disambiguate frequent homographs such as pode (present tense of the verb poder) and pôde (past tense of the same verb), or para (preposition) and pára (verb). In phonetics, a diphthong (Greek and ending tongue positions. ... An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. ...

Note that the rules for dividing words into syllables in Portuguese are the same as those of Catalan, but different from those of Spanish. For hyphenation and accentuation purposes, consecutive vowels are treated as hiatuses, even though they may be pronounced as rising diphthongs in practice. For example, the words Inácio and Amazônia are split as I-ná-ci-o and A-ma-zô-ni-a, even though their last syllables are often pronounced /si̯u/ and /ni̯ɐ/, respectively. Thus, these words are counted as proparoxytones, and must be accented. In Spanish, by contrast, the words Ignacio and Amazonia are regarded as paroxytones, I-gna-cio and A-ma-zo-nia, and do not require an accent mark.

Spelling reform

Related article: Spelling reforms of Portuguese

As of 2005, Portuguese has two orthographic standards: This article is about the spelling reforms of the Portuguese language. ... 2005 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

• The Brazilian orthography, official in Brazil.
• The European orthography, official in Portugal, Macau, and the five African Portuguese language countries.

In East Timor, both orthographies are currently being taught in schools.

The table to the right illustrates typical differences between the two orthographies. Some are due to different pronunciations, but others are merely graphic. The main ones are: The orthography of a language is the set of symbols (glyphs and diacritics) used to write a language, as well as the set of rules describing how to write these glyphs correctly, including spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. ...

• Presence or absence of certain consonants: The letters c and p appear in some words before c, ç or t in one orthography, but are absent from the other. Normally, the letter is written down in the European spelling, but not in the Brazilian spelling. In most cases, it is not pronounced in any variety of the language.

• Different use of diacritics: the Brazilian spelling has a, ê or ô followed by m or n before a vowel, in several words where the European orthography has á, é or ó, due to different pronunciation. The diaeresis mark is used in Brazilian spelling to indicate that the letter u is pronounced rather than silent in the digraphs gü and qü when they are followed by e or i; the European spelling no longer uses it. The Brazilian orthography distinguishes between stressed éi and stressed ei, which are pronounced differently in Brazilian Portuguese; in European Portuguese, both diphthongs are pronounced the same way, and éi appears only in some oxytone plural nouns and adjectives, by convention.

In 1990, an orthographic agreement was signed between the Portuguese language countries (except East Timor, which was under Indonesian occupation at the time), with the intent of creating a single common orthography for Portuguese. This spelling reform was meant to go into effect after all signatory countries had ratified it, but at the end of the decade only Brazil, Cape Verde and Portugal had done so. In the July 2004 summit of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, São Tomé and Príncipe ratified the agreement, and a modification was made to the text, allowing the reform to go forward in those countries which have already ratified it. This is to happen after a transition period which is, however, yet to be defined. Brazilian Portuguese is a collective name for the varieties of Portuguese written and spoken by virtually all the 180 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a couple million Brazilian immigrants and temporary workers in other countries, mainly in Canada, United States, Portugal, Paraguay and Japan. ... The factual accuracy of this article is disputed. ...

The orthographic agreement proposes the elimination of the letters c and p from the European/African spelling whenever they are silent, the elimination of the diaeresis mark from the Brazilian spelling, and the elimination of the acute accent from the diphthongs éi and ói in paroxytone words. As for divergent spellings such as anónimo and anônimo, facto and fato, both will be considered legitimate, according to the dialect of the author or person being transcribed. The agreement also establishes some common guidelines for the use of hyphens. Paroxytone is a linguistic term for a word with stress on the penultimate syllable, that is, the syllable before the last syllable, , the English word canasta. ...

See also

• Portuguese phonology
• Spelling reforms of Portuguese
• Portuguese alphabet

Below is a sketch of the phonology and orthography of Portuguese. ... This article is about the spelling reforms of the Portuguese language. ... The official Portuguese alphabet consists of the letters of the Latin alphabet minus K, W, and Y: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, X, Z Although not found in vernacular terms, the letters K, W...

References

• Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial Notícias, 2004.
• Estrela, Edite A questão ortográfica -- Reforma e acordos da língua portuguesa (1993) Editorial Notícias

External links

• IILP - Orthographic Agreement of 1990 (in Portuguese)