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Portuguese Orthography

Encyclopedia : P : PO : POR : Portuguese Orthography

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.

Contents

Letters

In the following, pronunciations with an asterisk beside them have dialectal variants, or special allophones in certain phonetic environments. See Portuguese phonology, for more details on those variants. Only the most frequent sounds are given, since a listing of all cases and exceptions would be too cumbersome. 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.

Letter Name Usual pronunciations
a á
b bê
c cê /s/ before e or i
d dê
e é or ê
f efe
g gê or guê /ʒ/ before e or i
h agá silent; part of the digraphs ch, lh, nh
i i
j jota
l ele
m eme
n ene
o ó
p pê
q quê
r erre /ʁ/* at the start of a syllable
s esse /z/ between vowels
t tê
u u
v vê
x xis /s/* at the end of a syllable
z zê /s/* at the end of a syllable

Digraphs

Digraph Usual pronunciation
ch
gu /g/ before e or i
lh
nh
ou
qu /k/ before e or i
rr
ss

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. For alternative pronunciations of rr, see Guttural R in Portuguese.

Accented letters

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

Accented letter Usual pronunciation
à
á
â
ã
ç
é
ê
í
ó
ô
õ
ú
ü

Diacritics

Portuguese makes use of six diacritics.

The cedilla in ç indicates that it is pronounced /s/. By convention, s is written instead of etymological ç at the beginning 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 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 grave accent (à) marks the contraction of two consecutive vowels in adjacent words (crasis), normally the preposition a and an article or a demonstrative pronoun: a + aquela = àquela "at that", a + a = à "at the", and so on. It does not indicate stress.

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).

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.

Grapheme Pronunciation Environment
am Word final.
em, ém Word final.
en, én Before final s; e.g. parabéns.
êm Word final.

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/.

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.

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 (chiefly Tupi-Guarani) origin, such as Guaracy.

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".

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.

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.

Monosyllables

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

Polysyllables

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

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:
Written varieties
Portugal & Africa Brazil translation
Different pronunciation
anónimo anônimo anonymous
Vénus Vênus Venus
facto fato fact
ideia idéia idea
Silent consonants
acção ação action
direcção direção direction
eléctrico elétrico electric
óptimo ótimo very good
Diacritics
frequente freqüente frequent
voo vôo flight
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:

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.

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.

See also

References

External links

 

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