BR Spelling: Overview

Brazilian Portuguese spelling is, by the standards of English, remarkably honest: most letters map to one sound, the stress rules are explicit, and you can usually pronounce a written word correctly on first sight. The catch is that the system carries information English does not — five different diacritical marks, a special letter for the [s] sound, and a small set of words whose spelling you simply have to know. This page is the map; each subpage drills into one region of it.

A writing system that mostly tells the truth

English spelling is famously chaotic: through, though, thought, tough, thorough all share letters but almost nothing in pronunciation. Portuguese is the opposite kind of language. The relationship between spelling and sound is mostly regular and rule-governed. If you know the rules, you can read aloud a word you have never seen, and you can usually spell a word you have only heard.

That said, "mostly" is doing real work. A handful of sounds can be spelled more than one way, and a handful of marks must be placed precisely. The rest of this overview names every moving part.

The alphabet: 26 letters

The Portuguese alphabet today has 26 letters — the same set as English. This was not always the case. For most of the 20th century, K, W and Y were treated as foreign and excluded from the official alphabet (it had 23 letters). The Acordo Ortográfico de 1990, which Brazil put into force in 2009, formally readmitted K, W and Y for foreign names, scientific units and symbols (see the alphabet page for the full inventory and letter names).

The five diacritics, each with one job

This is where Portuguese spelling carries information English lacks entirely. There are five diacritical marks, and each one tells you something specific:

The contrast between acute and circumflex is the one English speakers most often miss. Both mark the stressed syllable, but the acute means the vowel is open and the circumflex means it is closed:

The tilde marks nasality (the air comes partly through the nose): mãe ("mother"), pão ("bread"), nação ("nation"). The cedilha turns c into an [s] sound before a, o, u (covered in detail on its own page). The grave appears almost only in crase — the fusion of the preposition a with a following article a (à, às).

Stress and when to write an accent

Portuguese has predictable default stress, and the written accent appears precisely when a word breaks that default. The full treatment is on the accent-rules page, but the headline is:

• Proparoxytones (stress on the third-from-last syllable) are always accented: médico, rápido, sábado.
• Oxytones (stress on the last syllable) are accented when they end in -a, -e, -o, -em, -ens: sofá, café, jacaré, também.
• Paroxytones (stress on the second-from-last, the default for most words) are accented only when they end in an "unusual" way: fácil, açúcar, táxi, ímã.

The 2009 Acordo Ortográfico

The most recent spelling reform changed a handful of things that still trip up older Brazilians and learners using old textbooks. The headline changes (detailed on the Acordo page):

• The trema (¨, as in the old lingüiça, freqüente) was abolished. Write linguiça, frequente now.
• The acute accent was removed from some diphthongs: old idéia, geléia, jibóia became ideia, geleia, jiboia.
• The circumflex was removed from double-o and from the -eem forms: old vôo, enjôo became voo, enjoo; crêem, lêem became creem, leem.
• K, W, Y were readmitted to the alphabet.

One famous non-change worth flagging: the word para ("for/to") is written without an accent, even though it can be confused with the verb form para ("he/she stops"). The old accented pára (the verb) was abolished in the reform — both are now just para, distinguished by context.

The main trouble spots

Three areas account for most spelling errors, and each has its own page:

1. The /s/ sound has several spellings. It can be written s, ss, ç, c, sc, x, xc. The choice among them follows rules (position in the word, the following vowel) covered on the SS-vs-S-vs-Ç page. The cedilha page handles when to use ç specifically.

2. The four "porquês." por que, porque, por quê, porquê are four distinct spellings with four distinct uses — one of the most common written errors among native speakers themselves.

3. Knowing WHEN to write an accent. Far more learners over-accent (adding marks that shouldn't be there) than under-accent. The accent-rules page is the cure.

Common Mistakes

Key takeaways

• Portuguese spelling is largely phonetic and rule-governed — much more so than English.
• The alphabet has 26 letters since the 2009 reform readmitted K, W, Y.
• There are five diacritics: acute (open + stress), circumflex (closed + stress), tilde (nasal), cedilha ([s] before a/o/u), grave (crase).
• Stress is predictable; you write an accent precisely when a word breaks the default stress pattern.
• The 2009 Acordo Ortográfico removed the trema, dropped accents from some diphthongs and double-o, and readmitted K/W/Y.
• The main traps: the multi-spelled /s/ sound, the four porquês, and knowing when an accent is required.