Alphabet and pronunciation

Portuguese is written with the Latin alphabet and, at first glance, looks familiar to anyone who knows Spanish, French or English. The surprise is in the sounds: a single letter can stand for more than one sound, and — above all in European Portuguese — many unstressed vowels almost vanish. This page sets out the essential reading rules so you can start pronouncing with confidence.

The 26 letters

Since the 1990 Orthographic Agreement, the Portuguese alphabet officially has 26 letters, with k, w and y reinstated (used mainly in proper names, symbols and loanwords). Each letter has a name:

Letter	Name	Letter	Name	Letter	Name
a	á	j	jota	s	esse
b	bê	k	capa	t	tê
c	cê	l	ele	u	u
d	dê	m	eme	v	vê
e	é	n	ene	w	dâblio
f	efe	o	ó	x	xis
g	gê	p	pê	y	ípsilon
h	agá	q	quê	z	zê
i	i	r	erre

The letter h has no sound of its own: it is silent at the start of a word (hora, “hour”; homem, “man”) and only “works” inside the digraphs ch, lh and nh.

The five vowels — and vowel reduction

The vowels are written a, e, i, o, u, but their value depends on whether or not they fall in the stressed syllable. When stressed, e and o can be open or close — a distinction that changes meaning:

Outside the stressed syllable, European Portuguese reduces its vowels sharply. This is the trait that most defines its sound: final e becomes a very brief [ɨ] or disappears, and final o sounds like [u] .

Spelling	Sound	Example	Reading
final o	[u]	*gato* (cat)	[ˈɡatu]
final e	[ɨ] / ø	*pinta* / *pode*	[ˈpĩtɐ] / [ˈpɔdɨ]
unstressed a	[ɐ]	*cama* (bed)	[ˈkɐmɐ]

This is why Lisboa (Lisbon) sounds [liʒˈboɐ] and telefone loses almost all of its first vowel in everyday speech: [tlˈfɔn] .

The nasal vowels

When a vowel is followed by m or n (in the same syllable) or carries a tilde (~), it is pronounced through the nose. Here the m and n are not consonants in their own right: they simply nasalise the vowel. The diphthong -ão is the language’s most emblematic sound.

Symbol	Spelling	Example	Meaning
[ɐ̃]	an / am / ã	*lã*	wool
[ẽ]	en / em	*pente*	comb
[ĩ]	in / im	*fim*	end
[õ]	on / om	*bom*	good
[ũ]	un / um	*um*	a / one
[ɐ̃w̃]	-ão	*pão*	bread
[õj̃]	-õe	*põe*	puts

Consonants and digraphs that surprise

Most consonants read as they do in English or Spanish, but a few cases are worth memorising from the very start:

• c and g are “hard” before a, o, u (casa, gato) and “soft” before e, i: c sounds [s] (cidade, “city”), g sounds [ʒ] (gelo, “ice”). The ç (cedilla) is always [s]: praça (square).
• s shifts with position: [s] at the start (sopa, “soup”), [z] between vowels (casa [ˈkazɐ] ). At the end of a syllable, in European Portuguese, it sounds [ʃ] — like English sh: as casas [ɐʃ ˈkazɐʃ] .
• digraphs: ch = [ʃ] (chave, “key”), lh = [ʎ] (ilha, “island”), nh = [ɲ] (vinho, “wine”).
• r: a single r between vowels is a brief tap, [ɾ] (caro [ˈkaɾu] ); an initial or double rr is strong, [ʁ], made in the throat (rato, carro [ˈkaʁu] ).
• j, and g before e, i, sound [ʒ], like the French j: já, hoje.

Accents and marks

The written marks guide your reading:

• acute accent (´) — a stressed open vowel: café, só;
• circumflex (^) — a stressed close vowel: português, avô;
• tilde (~) — nasality: mãe (mother), nação (nation);
• cedilla (¸) — the ç with the value [s]: coração (heart);
• grave accent (`) — only the contraction of a + a: à, àquele.

The basic stress rule is straightforward: with no written accent, words ending in -a, -e, -o (and their plurals) are paroxytones, stressed on the next-to-last syllable (mesa, gato); those ending in other consonants or in -i, -u are oxytones, stressed on the last syllable (animal). Anything breaking the pattern takes a written accent (café).

Where to begin

You need not master everything at once. For a beginner’s ear and mouth, three habits pay off more than any rule:

1. weaken the final unstressed vowels (-o > [u], -e > [ɨ] or silent);
2. nasalise -ão and the vowels before m/n naturally;
3. tell the brief r from the strong r, and the syllable-final s [ʃ].

With these, reading aloud stops being guesswork. The rest — open versus close vowels, the awkward cases of x — comes into focus with exposure and practice.