Accent Marks: Á, À, Â, Ã, É, Ê, Í, Ó, Ô, Õ, Ú

Portuguese uses four diacritics: the acute ( ´ ), the circumflex ( ˆ ), the tilde ( ˜ ), and the grave ( ` ). Plus the cedilha (¸) on the letter c, which is a consonant-modifier rather than a vowel accent but is usually grouped with them. Each of these marks does a specific job — and unlike in Spanish or French, several of them do two jobs at once. A Portuguese accent often tells you both where the stress falls and which vowel quality to produce. That's why the open-ó versus closed-ô distinction, or the open-é versus closed-ê distinction, is visible on the page: the shape of the hat is the phonetic instruction. Learn to read the accents and you have a huge part of Portuguese pronunciation already in hand.

The four diacritics at a glance

A fifth mark, the cedilha (¸) on ç, is a consonant diacritic: it tells you the c is pronounced [s] rather than [k] before a, o, u. Portuguese also uses a trema or diaeresis ( ¨ ) historically, but the 1990 Orthographic Agreement removed it almost entirely — you will see it only in a few proper names (Müller, Piaget).

The acute accent ´ — open and stressed

The acute is the most common Portuguese accent. It marks stress and, when it appears on a mid-vowel, signals the open quality.

Notice the phonetic message of the acute on a mid-vowel: it simultaneously says "stress here" and "pronounce this vowel with an open mouth, lower jaw." The same word with a circumflex would be a different pronunciation — and often a different word entirely.

The circumflex accent ˆ — closed and stressed

The circumflex marks stress plus the closed quality of a mid-vowel. It's the counterpart to the acute: where the acute says "open," the circumflex says "closed."

The classic minimal pair — avó vs. avô

The most famous use of the acute-vs-circumflex distinction is the pair avó (grandmother) / avô (grandfather). They are spelled identically apart from the accent, and differ in pronunciation only by the quality of the stressed o.

• avó [ɐˈvɔ] — acute, open [ɔ], lower jaw. "Grandmother."
• avô [ɐˈvo] — circumflex, closed [o], rounder lips. "Grandfather."

An English speaker who pronounces both words identically — with a value between [ɔ] and [o] — is inaudibly saying "grandparent" each time, which leaves the listener to figure it out from context. Train yourself to hit the contrast.

PT-PT vs. Brazilian — where the accents diverge

Post-1990 orthographic reform aligned much of the spelling between European and Brazilian Portuguese, but one subtle difference remains in how the two standards handle certain proparoxytones. Words where the stressed vowel before a nasal is pronounced closed in Brazil but open in Portugal get different accents.

The reason: in a handful of proparoxytones, Portugal pronounces the stressed vowel with an open quality [ɔ] or [ɛ] where Brazil produces a closed [o] or [e]. The spelling honours the actual pronunciation of each variety. When you read European Portuguese, expect António, ténis, académico, bónus — if you are coming from Brazilian materials, note the difference.

The tilde ˜ — nasalisation

The tilde marks a nasal vowel. Air flows through the nose while the vowel is being produced. The tilde only appears on a and o in Portuguese; nasal e, i, u are marked instead by a following m or n in the same syllable.

In words where nasality is marked by a following m or n, no tilde appears — the nasal consonant letter does the job. Thus cantar [kɐ̃ˈtaɾ] has a nasal [ɐ̃], but no tilde is needed because the n that follows signals nasalisation. The nasal spreads backward onto the preceding vowel.

The tilde and stress

When a word ends in -ão, -ã, -ãe, -õe, stress usually falls on this nasal syllable by default (as an oxytone ending in a nasal). The tilde alone does not "mark" stress — but because nasal endings are default oxytones, the combination often does.

Proparoxytones with a tilde elsewhere in the word do require an additional acute or circumflex accent to show stress, as in órfã (orphan, feminine) where the acute on ó shows the stress is there, and the tilde on ã adds nasality to a different, unstressed syllable.

The grave accent ` — the crasis

The grave accent appears on one letter only in standard Portuguese: à. Its job is to mark the contraction of preposition a + feminine article a, known as crase ("crasis"). It does not change pronunciation relative to plain a; it is a purely orthographic signal to the reader that a grammatical fusion has happened.

• a (preposition "to") + a (article "the" feminine singular) = à
• a (preposition "to") + as (article "the" feminine plural) = às
• a (preposition "to") + aquele/aquela/aquilo = àquele, àquela, àquilo

The cedilha ç — the soft c

The ç (c cedilha or cê cedilhado) is a consonant diacritic: it tells you to pronounce c as [s] in a position where it would otherwise be [k]. Specifically, before a, o, u, a plain c is [k] (casa, como, cultura). To get [s] in that same position, you need ç.

The cedilha never appears before e or i, because plain c is already [s] there. You will never see çi or çe in a correctly-spelled Portuguese word.

The 1990 Orthographic Agreement — what changed

The Acordo Ortográfico de 1990 (AO90), adopted in Portugal in 2009 with a transition period that closed in 2015, simplified several accent rules. The main changes affecting diacritics:

1. Paroxytone -eu, -eo, -oi lost their acute accents. What used to be idéia is now ideia; jóia is now joia; européia is now europeia. (Note: BR had kept these accents; they are now gone in both standards.)

2. Differential accents on homographs disappeared in most cases. The old pára (verb "stops") vs. para (preposition "for") no longer carries an accent on the verb; both are now written para and context disambiguates. (Pôr, distinguishing the verb from the preposition por, was kept — one of the few exceptions.)

3. The trema ¨ (as in old-spelling qüinqüênio, freqüência) was eliminated entirely. Modern spelling is quinquénio, frequência.

4. Unstressed diphthongs -ei, -oi in proparoxytones kept their accents where needed, but a few were regularised.

Accent comparison: Spanish, French, Portuguese

The logic diverges most sharply between Portuguese and French: both have the acute and the circumflex, but in French the acute marks closed (été) and the circumflex is mostly etymological; in Portuguese the opposite is true — the acute marks open ([ɛ], [ɔ]) and the circumflex marks closed ([e], [o]). Be careful if you're switching between the two languages.

Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: Swapping the acute for the circumflex on mid-vowels

This is the single most common accent error, because English speakers default to not distinguishing open from closed vowels. Writing avó when you mean avô (or vice versa) is both a spelling error and a different word.

Mistake 2: Omitting the tilde on nasal vowels

Forgetting the tilde on irmão, maçã, mãe, põe is not a typo — it's an error that changes the pronunciation. Mao without tilde would be [ˈmaw], a meaningless diphthong; mão with tilde is [mɐ̃w̃], "hand."

Mistake 3: Writing à when plain a is correct

The grave is only used for à = a + a contractions. Learners sometimes apply it to any initial a, which is wrong.

Mistake 4: Forgetting the cedilha before a, o, u

Without the cedilha, c before a, o, u is [k]. If you want the [s] sound, you must write ç. In criança, the cedilha on the second c is doing essential work — without it, the word would be spelled crianca and pronounced [kɾiˈɐ̃kɐ], which is not a word. Similarly, acucar instead of açúcar would be a nonsense [ɐkuˈkaɾ].

Mistake 5: Carrying over old (pre-AO90) spellings

Writing idéia, jóia, pára (verb), freqüência looks like a decision but is in fact an outdated orthography. Modern Portuguese in Portugal follows the 1990 Agreement, which eliminated or regularised these accents.

Mistake 6: Using Brazilian-specific accent choices in PT-PT

Writing antônimo, bônus, tênis, acadêmico (all with circumflex) is correct Brazilian spelling but incorrect European spelling. PT-PT uses acute: antónimo, bónus, ténis, académico — reflecting the open [ɔ]/[ɛ] pronunciation in Portugal.

Key Takeaways

• Portuguese has four accents (acute, circumflex, tilde, grave) plus the cedilha as a consonant modifier.
• The acute marks stress + open vowel quality ([a], [ɛ], [ɔ]); the circumflex marks stress + closed quality ([ɐ], [e], [o]).
• The tilde marks nasalisation on ã, õ. Nasal e, i, u use a following m/n instead.
• The grave appears only on à, marking the contraction a + a (crasis); it does not change pronunciation.
• The cedilha makes c soft ([s]) before a, o, u; it never appears before e or i.
• Avó vs. avô is the classic acute/circumflex minimal pair — and a test of whether you are reading accents carefully.
• PT-PT specific: use António, ténis, académico, bónus, antónimo with acute; these are circumflex in BR.
• The 1990 Orthographic Agreement simplified some accents: ideia (not idéia), joia (not jóia), para verb (not pára), no trema on quinquénio, frequência.
• Spanish, French, and Portuguese use the same diacritic symbols in different ways — don't transfer habits from one language to another.
• Every accent in Portuguese carries real phonetic information. Drop them at your peril.