Portuguese Orthography

Orthography is the set of conventions that fix the correct written form of a language: which letters are used, how words are accented, when to write a capital or a hyphen. It does not describe the language — it describes its writing. Portuguese has a predominantly phonological orthography: spelling aims to represent the sounds of speech. Yet that base coexists with etymological criteria and historical habits, which is what explains both its irregularities and its long record of reform.

A phonological base, with exceptions

Compared with English or French, Portuguese is spelled fairly regularly: in most cases, once the rules are known, a word can be read predictably from its spelling. Even so, the match between letter and sound is not one-to-one. The same letter may stand for several sounds, depending on its position:

Conversely, the vowel reduction typical of European Portuguese is almost never marked in writing: one writes de but says [dɨ] , and the unstressed e of pequeno does not sound like the stressed one in pé. Orthography thus fixes a stable form above a pronunciation that varies across time and place.

Letters, digraphs and diacritics

The Portuguese alphabet now has 26 letters, including k, w and y, brought back by the 1990 Agreement for proper names, symbols and loanwords. Alongside the single letters, certain digraphs stand for a single sound — ch, lh, nh, rr, ss, and also qu and gu before e/i.

The vowels carry diacritics, each with its own job: the acute accent (á, é, í, ó, ú) and the circumflex (â, ê, ô) mark the stressed syllable and the vowel’s quality; the tilde (ã, õ) signals nasality; the cedilla (ç) gives c the value [s] before a, o, u; and the grave accent (à) serves only to mark the contraction of the preposition a with the article. These signs are not ornament: they distinguish meanings, as in e “and” / é “is”, or avo “a fraction” / avô “grandfather”.

A system built by reform

Portuguese spelling was not always regular. Until the early 20th century it followed an etymological principle that preserved silent consonants and Greek- and Latin-derived spellings — pharmacia, philosopho, sciencia. The 1911 reform, the first official one, broke with that tradition in Portugal, adopting a phonetically oriented spelling. Successive Luso-Brazilian conventions — that of 1945, followed in Portugal, and the Brazilian formulary of 1943 — brought the two spellings closer but never unified them.

The 1990 Orthographic Agreement

The 1990 Orthographic Agreement is the framework in force today. It seeks a common spelling across all the Portuguese-speaking countries, chiefly by dropping the silent consonants that only some still wrote (acção → ação, óptimo → ótimo) and through new rules for accentuation, hyphenation and capitals. In Portugal it has been official since 2009, after a transition period.

How to read this section

The articles that follow develop each of these themes. For the writing system, see the Portuguese alphabet and, for the marks, graphic accentuation. The historical dimension is covered in the reforms of 1911 and 1945 and in the 1990 Orthographic Agreement; the most debated points appear under silent consonants and spelling differences between Portugal and Brazil.