Sounds, spelling & accent marks

What it is

Portuguese spelling is regular: with a handful of rules you can read any word aloud and spell most of the words you hear. This topic covers the accent marks, the letter pairs that stand for one sound, the sounds that make Portuguese sound Brazilian, and where the stress falls.

Accents matter here because you type your answers. A missing accent is usually just a slip, but sometimes it makes a different word: avô is your grandfather and avó your grandmother; e means "and" and é means "is".

How to form it

Portuguese uses five marks:

The acute and the circumflex both mark the stressed syllable. The difference is the vowel: open in café and avó, closed in você and avô. The tilde marks a nasal vowel, and that syllable is usually the stressed one: irmã, não. The grave accent appears only on à, two a’s fused into one: à noite, às oito. A word never carries two stress marks.

Most letters sound as you’d expect. These are the ones that surprise English speakers:

Two Brazilian habits change hundreds of words: unstressed final -e and -o sound "ee" and "oo", and ti, di sound "chee, jee". So leite sounds like "LAY-chee" and cidade like "see-DAH-jee". Accents vary: in parts of the Northeast and the South, tia keeps a plain t and leite a plain e. All of them are correct.

When to use it

Every word has one stressed syllable, and you write an accent only when the stress breaks the default:

1. Words ending in a, e, o, am, em, ens (with or without s) are stressed on the second-to-last syllable: CA-sa, TAR-de, FA-lam, HO-mem.
2. Words ending in anything else (i, u, l, r, z, im, um, a nasal ã or ão) are stressed on the last syllable: a-QUI, Bra-SIL, fa-LAR, fe-LIZ, ir-MÃ.
3. A written accent marks every exception: ca-FÉ, vo-CÊ, a-VÓ (rule 1 would stress them earlier), FÁ-cil, a-ÇÚ-car, TÁ-xi (rule 2 would stress them later), and every word stressed on the third-to-last syllable: MÚ-si-ca, Ô-ni-bus, MÉ-di-co.

The acute also marks a stressed i or u that doesn’t blend with the vowel before it: país (pa-ÍS) and saí (sa-Í) have two syllables, while pais and sai have one.

• Meu avô mora em Natal.My grandfather lives in Natal.a-VÔ: last syllable, closed ô
• Minha avó mora em Porto Alegre.My grandmother lives in Porto Alegre.a-VÓ: last syllable, open ó
• Você fala inglês?Do you speak English?vo-CÊ, in-GLÊS: closed ê
• É fácil!It’s easy!FÁ-cil: ends in -l but is stressed earlier
• O ônibus é rápido.The bus is fast.Ô-ni-bus, RÁ-pi-do: third-to-last syllable
• Moro aqui perto.I live near here.a-QUI: ends in -i, so no accent is needed

Contrasts and traps

• A missing accent counts as "almost" in this course, unless it makes another word: Ela e de Recife ✗ says "She and from Recife".
• Don’t add accents Portuguese doesn’t need: tía, aquí, idéia ✗ → tia, aqui, ideia.
• Brazil follows the 1990 spelling agreement: no accent in ideia or heroico, no circumflex in voo or leem, no ü in linguiça or frequente. Older books still show idéia and vôo.
• Brazilian spelling writes ê and ô before m and n: tênis, Antônio, econômico. Texts from Portugal use é and ó in these words.
• Spell the word, not the sound: Brazilians say "bra-ZEEW" but write Brasil. Final l and u sound alike, so mal (badly) and mau (bad) are both [maw].

If you speak Spanish

• ñ → nh: español ✗ → espanhol, mañana → amanhã. But año → ano and pequeño → pequeno.
• ll, j → lh, ch or l: millón → milhão, hijo → filho, llave → chave, ella → ela, caballo → cavalo (one l).
• -ción → -ção, -dad → -dade, -ble → -vel: informação, cidade, possível.
• Some words move the stress: policía → polícia, nivel → nível, teléfono → telefone.
• The ending -ia works the other way round: Spanish marks a stressed i (día, tía, María), Portuguese marks the syllable before an unstressed one (família, farmácia, história). So dia, tia, Maria need no accent.
• Spanish has only the acute. Portuguese writes closed e and o with a circumflex: inglês, português, bebê.