Appendix:Portuguese spellings

This appendix explains how particular sets of characters and diacritics are found in Portuguese language.

Trema

The trema (also called trema in Portuguese) had several purposes in Portuguese.

Diaeresis

The trema (¨) served the purpose of being placed above u (resulting in ü) to distinguish whether “qu” and “gu” are digraphs or diphthongs. If a trema exists, the u was pronounced as /w/; if not, the u is mute.

This use of the trema was deprecated in Portugal by the 1945 spelling reform, and in Brazil by the Orthographic Agreement of 1990 (which came into effect in 2009).

Examples of obsolete spellings using trema for diaeresis in Portuguese

	With trema	Pronunciation (Brazil)	Meaning	Without trema	Pronunciation (Brazil)	Meaning
qüe / que	freqüência	/fɾe.ˈkwẽ.sjɐ/	frequency	quente	/ˈkẽ.t͡ʃi/	hot
qüi / qui	aqüífero	/a.ˈkwi.fe.ɾu/	aquifer	aqui	/a.ˈki/	here
güe / gue	agüentar	/ˌa.ɡwẽ.ˈta/	to withstand, to put up with	guerra	/ˈɡɛ.ʁɐ/	war
güi / gui	pingüim	/pĩ.ˈɡwĩ/	penguin	guia	/ˈɡi.ɐ/	guide

Hiatus

The trema was placed over the second vowel of non-stressed hiatus. Example: gaüchismo (“manner or word proper of a Gaucho”), pronounced /ˌɡa.u.ˈʃis.mu/, not */ɡaw.ˈʃis.mu/.

This usage was made obsolete in Portugal by the 1945 spelling reform, and in Brazil by the 1971 spelling reform.

Foreignisms

In the current orthography, the trema is only used where it exists in a foreign word. Examples: hübneriano (“Hubnerian”), from the German personal name Hübner.

Grave accent

The grave accent (`) is called acento grave or crase in Portuguese.

Crasis

The grave accent is used to mark crasis of the preposition a (“to”) with another word which starts with the letter a. Examples: à (“to the”) (from preposition a + feminine article a), àquele (“to that”).

Secondary stress

The grave accent was used to mark secondary stress in suffixed words when the root also had an accent. Examples: só (“alone”) → sòmente (“just; only”), café (“coffee”) → cafèzinho (“small cup of coffee”).

This usage was made obsolete by the 1973 spelling reform in Portugal and by the 1971 spelling reform in Brazil.

Tilde

The tilde (~, called til in Portuguese) is used to indicate nasalisation of a vowel followed by another vowel. This only occurs as ã and õ. Ã is also used word-finally to indicate stress (unless there is an acute or circumflex accent elsewhere in the words).

Acute and circumflex accents

The acute accent (´, called acento agudo in Portuguese) and the circumflex accent (ˆ, called acento circunflexo in Portuguese) are used to mark a stressed syllable and either may occur only once in a word. It is only necessary to mark stress in the following situations:

• the word is a proparoxytone; Examples: fôlego, último;
• the word is a paroxytone and ends in -ã, -ão, -i, -u or a consonant except -m and -s (but including -ns). Example: bênção;
• the word is an oxytone and doesn’t end in -ã, -ão, -i, -u or a consonant except -m and -s (but including -ns). Examples: café, matinê;
• certain monosyllabic verbs and nouns, when the same form exists as another part of speech. Examples: pôr (“to put”), por (“by”);
• a vocalic u or i would otherwise be an approximant. Examples: país (“country”) (/pa.ˈis/), pais (“parents”) (/pajs/).

In paroxytones, when the same form existed with an open and a closed vowel, a circumflex accent was placed in the word with the closed vowel. Example: êle (“he”) (/ˈe.li/) and ele (“name of the letter L”) (/ˈɛ.li/). This usage was made obsolete by the 1945 spelling reform in Portugal, and by the 1971 spelling reform in Brazil.

The acute accent is used above open vowels and the circumflex above closed vowels, in vowels where such distinction exists (a, e and o):

Pronunciation of vowels with acute and circumflex accents in Portuguese

	acute		circumflex
a	á	/a/	â	/ɐ/
e	é	/ɛ/	ê	/e/
i	í	/i/	-	-
o	ó	/ɔ/	ô	/o/
u	ú	/u/	-	-