Portuguese uses five diacritical marks, and unlike in some languages where accents are partly decorative, each Brazilian Portuguese mark carries precise, predictable information. An accent tells you about stress, vowel quality (open vs. closed), nasalization, or a specific sound — and sometimes a grammatical contraction. This page goes through all five, what each one does, and the modern post-2009 spelling rules that changed several of them.
The five marks at a glance
| Mark | Name (PT) | Letters | What it encodes |
|---|---|---|---|
| ´ acute | acento agudo | á é í ó ú | stress + open vowel quality |
| ^ circumflex | acento circunflexo | â ê ô | stress + closed vowel quality |
| ~ tilde | til | ã õ | nasalization |
| ` grave | acento grave | à | crase (a + a); no stress role |
| ¸ cedilla | cedilha | ç | [s] before a, o, u |
Acute (´): stress + open vowel
The acute accent does two jobs at once. It marks stress (telling you which syllable to hit, per the stress rules), and on the mid vowels it specifies the open quality: é = open [ɛ], ó = open [ɔ]. On a, i, u there is only one quality, so there the acute marks stress alone.
Você quer um café ou prefere um chá?
Do you want a coffee or would you rather have a tea?
Café acute puts stress on the last syllable and signals the open [ɛ]. Compare the closed [e] of an unaccented final -e elsewhere.
O avô dele tem uma fazenda de café no interior.
His grandfather has a coffee farm in the countryside.
A água está fria demais pra tomar banho agora.
The water is too cold to take a shower right now.
Água [ˈagwɐ] carries the acute on á purely to mark stress (a has no open/closed contrast).
Circumflex (^): stress + closed vowel
The circumflex also marks stress, but on the mid vowels it specifies the closed quality: ê = closed [e], ô = closed [o], â = the central [ɐ] (closed-ish a, typically before a nasal).
O avô e a avó vão chegar no fim de semana.
The grandfather and the grandmother are arriving this weekend.
This sentence shows the contrast that makes the marks worth learning: avô [aˈvo] ("grandfather", closed ô) vs. avó [aˈvɔ] ("grandmother", open ó). The only difference in speech is open vs. closed [o] — and the diacritic is what tells you which family member you mean.
Ele me deu três conselhos que eu nunca esqueci.
He gave me three pieces of advice that I never forgot.
Três [tɾes] has a closed [e] under the circumflex. (Note the spelling: três with a circumflex.)
Tilde (~): nasalization
The til over ã and õ marks nasalization — air flows through the nose during the vowel. It is the only mark whose primary job is a sound feature rather than stress (though a tilde-bearing vowel is usually the stressed one too). It appears in nasal vowels and especially the nasal diphthongs.
Minha mãe põe o pão na mesa toda manhã.
My mom puts the bread on the table every morning.
Mãe [mɐ̃j], põe [põj], pão [pɐ̃w] — three nasal diphthongs, each marked by the til. Without the tilde these would be ordinary oral vowels.
Os irmãos não se falam há anos por causa de uma confusão.
The brothers haven't spoken to each other in years because of a misunderstanding.
Irmãos [iʁˈmɐ̃ws] and confusão -ão ending is the single most common nasal diphthong in Portuguese, and the til is mandatory.
Grave (`): crase only
The grave accent has exactly one use in Portuguese, and it is grammatical, not phonetic: it marks crase, the fusion of the preposition a with a following article a(s) or with certain pronouns. à = a + a. It carries no stress information and does not change the vowel's sound from a plain stressed á — its entire job is to signal "two a's have merged here."
Vou à praia no domingo se não chover.
I'm going to the beach on Sunday if it doesn't rain.
à here = a (preposition "to") + a (the feminine article of a praia). Compare vou a São Paulo (no article, no crase, no grave) with vou à praia (article present, crase, grave accent).
A reunião foi adiada das duas às quatro da tarde.
The meeting was moved from two to four in the afternoon.
às = a + as (with the plural feminine article in the time expression as quatro horas). The full mechanics live on the crase/contractions-with-a page.
Cedilla (ç): [s] before a, o, u
The cedilha is hung under c to force the [s] sound before the back vowels a, o, u, where a plain c would otherwise be [k]. Before e and i, c is already [s], so the cedilla is never used there — you never write çe or çi.
Faço questão de almoçar com a minha mãe no sábado.
I make a point of having lunch with my mom on Saturday.
Faço [ˈfasu] and almoçar ç gives [s] before o and a. Without the cedilla, faco would be read [ˈfaku].
O preço do açaí subiu de novo nesse verão.
The price of açaí went up again this summer.
Preço [ˈpɾesu], açaí [asaˈi]. Note that açaí also carries an acute on the í to mark the stressed, separately-pronounced vowel (a hiatus, not a diphthong).
Post-AO90 spelling reform: what changed
The 1990 Orthographic Agreement (Acordo Ortográfico), implemented in Brazil from 2009–2016, simplified several accent rules. Modern Brazilian texts follow these; older texts will look different.
1. The trema (¨) was abolished. The dieresis once marked a pronounced u in qü-/gü- sequences. It is gone from all words.
A linguiça da feira é muito mais saborosa.
The sausage from the market is much tastier.
linguiça is now written without the trema (old spelling: lingüiça). The u is still pronounced — only the mark disappeared.
2. No acute on -ei- and -oi- in paroxytones. Open diphthongs in second-to-last syllables lost their accent.
Tive uma ideia melhor pra resolver isso.
I had a better idea to solve this.
ideia (old: idéia), assembleia (old: assembléia), heroico (old: heróico). The pronunciation is unchanged; the accent was simply dropped.
3. No circumflex on double -oo (and some -ee). Verbs and nouns with a hiatus -oo lost the circumflex.
O voo atrasou e a gente perdeu a conexão.
The flight was delayed and we missed the connection.
voo (old: vôo), enjoo (old: enjôo), and the verb forms leem / veem (old: lêem / vêem).
4. Several accents distinguishing homographs were removed. Where context disambiguates, the accent went away — notably para (the verb "stops", formerly pára, now identical to the preposition para "for/to") and pelo (the contraction "by the", formerly pêlo for "hair/fur").
Ninguém para de falar nesse assunto.
Nobody stops talking about this subject.
Here para is the verb "stops" — under the old rules it would be pára to set it apart from the preposition para. Today both are spelled para, and context tells them apart.
Common Mistakes
❌ Writing the grandmother as 'avô' and grandfather as 'avó'
Incorrect — the marks are swapped
✅ avô (grandfather, closed [o]) / avó (grandmother, open [ɔ])
Correct — circumflex = closed, acute = open.
❌ Writing 'çinco' or 'çedo' for cinco / cedo
Incorrect — cedilla before e/i
✅ cinco, cedo (plain c)
Correct — c is already [s] before e/i, so the cedilla is never used there.
❌ Using à (grave) just because the next word starts with a stressed 'a'
Incorrect — treating the grave as a stress mark
✅ à only for crase: vou à praia (a + a)
Correct — the grave marks the merger of preposition a + article a, nothing else.
❌ Writing 'idéia', 'vôo', 'pára', 'lingüiça' in modern Brazilian text
Incorrect — these are pre-2009 spellings
✅ ideia, voo, para, linguiça
Correct — post-AO90 spellings; the accents/trema were removed.
One more confusion to clear up: the tilde is not a stress mark you can move around for emphasis, and the acute and circumflex are not interchangeable. Each is locked to a specific function. If you're unsure whether a mid vowel takes acute or circumflex, you actually need to know whether it's open or closed — the mark and the sound are two sides of the same fact.
Key Takeaways
- Acute ´ = stress + open vowel (é [ɛ], ó [ɔ]); on a/i/u, stress only.
- Circumflex ^ = stress + closed vowel (ê [e], ô [o], â [ɐ]).
- Tilde ~ = nasalization (ã, õ), central to nasal diphthongs like -ão, -ãe, -õe.
- Grave ` = crase (a + a) only — purely grammatical, no stress or sound change.
- Cedilla ç = [s] before a/o/u; never before e/i.
- Post-AO90: no trema, no acute on -ei-/-oi- (ideia), no circumflex on -oo (voo), and dropped homograph accents (para, pelo).
Now practice Portuguese
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Start learning Portuguese→Related Topics
- Stress Patterns in BRA2 — Portuguese stress is rule-governed: default penultimate for vowel/-s endings, default final for consonant endings, with written accents flagging only the exceptions.
- Open vs Closed Mid Vowels (é vs ê, ó vs ô)A2 — How to hear and produce Brazilian Portuguese's open ([ɛ], [ɔ]) versus closed ([e], [o]) vowels — and how the written accents and plural metaphony tell you which is which.
- BR Portuguese Pronunciation: OverviewA1 — A map of Brazilian Portuguese sounds — seven oral vowels, nasal vowels, the consonant inventory, and the signature features that make BR sound the way it does.
- Contractions with 'A' (The Crase)A2 — The 'a' contractions (ao, aos) and the crase (à) in Brazilian Portuguese — what the accent really means, the reliable substitution test, when crase is required, and the most common crase errors.