The Portuguese Alphabet: Letters, Sounds and Diacritics

Understanding the Portuguese alphabet—how it looks and sounds—is one of the first steps to learning the language.

Like English, Portuguese uses the Latin alphabet with 26 letters: 5 vowels and 21 consonants. However, the letters K, Y, and W are only used in loanwords and foreign names. In practice, this means that Portuguese primarily relies on 18 consonant letters for everyday writing.

Listen to what the alphabet letters sound like in Portuguese:

a (á)	j (jota)	s (ésse)
b (bê)	k (capa)	t (tê)
c (cê)	l (éle)	u (u)
d (dê)	m (éme)	v (vê)
e (é)	n (éne)	w (dáblio)
f (éfe)	o (ó)	x (xis)
g (gê)	p (pê)	y (ípsilon)
h (agá)	q (quê)	z (zê)
i (i)	r (érre)

In addition to the letters of the alphabet, it’s important to become familiar with the diacritic marks used in Portuguese to indicate word stress, nasalization, and vowel height. Read on.

Alphabet letters vs. language sounds

It is useful to look into the relationship between letters and language sounds. Letters graphically represent the latter and we use them to register spoken language in a written format. 

More often than not, the relationship between alphabet letters and language sounds is not on a one-to-one basis. This is the case for both Portuguese and English and many other languages.

For instance, there are in Portuguese 5 vowel letters, just as in English. Yet, these 5 vowels stand for 9 different vowel sounds. The opposite is also true. One vowel sound can be denoted by different vowel letters. 

The same goes for consonants. In Portuguese, there are more consonant sounds than consonant letters. Thus, consonants combine with other consonants to produce new consonant sounds. And vice-versa, the same consonant sound can be represented by different letters.

For instance, the letter x can render four (!) different sounds. Here’s a video for you.

Consonant pairs

Digraphs are consonant pairs that render a specific sound. Here are 5 of them:

ss	rr	ch	nh	lh
massa	carro	acho	ninho	milho

ss

This double-s always occurs between vowels (massa). It produces a voiceless s-sound as in simple.

rr

The double r also occurs between vowels (carro). It is pronounced with the back of your throat, thus producing a guttural sound similar to the French r. 

ch

The ch-digraph always produces a hushing sound, as in shave. It can appear both at the beginning or in the middle of words (acho, chapéu).

nh

The nh-digraph (ninho) renders a nasal sound and is somewhat close to the ng sound in English words such as mingle, tango, or English. 

lh

The lh-digraph (milho) produces a sound similar to the l-sound, as in London, though slightly different.

Portuguese diacritics

Five diacritical marks are used in Portuguese to indicate stress, nasalization, vowel height, and other sound changes. Here’s a quick rundown:

Acento agudo (´)	Acento circunflexo (^)	Acento grave (`)	Tilde (~)	Cedilha  (ç)
avó avo	avô avó	–	irmã irmão	caça caca

Acento agudo (´)

The acute accent indicates syllable stress and vowel height. 

Take the words avó (grandmother) and avo (fraction). Both words have the same letters, but while in avo you stress the first syllable, in avó you’d stress the last one.

Also, the o in avo produces a closed-vowel sound, while the ó in avó produces an open-vowel sound.  

Acento circunflexo (^)

The circumflex, like the acute accent, indicates syllable stress and vowel height. 

Take the same word avó as before, and also the word avô (grandfather). You’d stress both words on the last syllable, but there is still a difference in how you pronounce both words. 

While the ó in avó produces an open vowel sound, the ô in avô produces a slightly more closed-vowel sound.

Acento grave (`)

In Portuguese, the grave accent only denotes contractions, namely

• à – contraction between the preposition a and the definite article a
• contraction between preposition a and some pronouns, for instance, the demonstratives aquele/aquela (àquele/àquela).

Tilde (~)

The tilde indicates the nasalization of vowels and diphthongs (irmã, limão). 

Cedilha  (ç)

This diacritic is only used for the letter c, and only when the following letter is a hard vowel – a, o, or u. 

Here’s how it works: the letter c before any hard vowel (caca ) produces a /k/-sound, as in catch. If you use the cedilla (caça), that same c will turn into an /s/-sound, as in soup.