If you’re stuck on how to read words and symbols in Brazilian Portuguese, this guide hopes to clear things up.
Before you get started, please note that European Portuguese is pronounced very differently than Brazilian. Some of the grammar, word choice and names of places are completely different. Some words that are considered “regular” in European Portuguese are considered swearwords in Brazilian and vice versa.
The Brazilian alphabet contains all the regular letters. W, K, and Y were added somewhat recently and are only there to accommodate foreign loanwords. It’s good to keep this in mind since their pronunciations are going to follow what the foreign word normally sounds like. (Usually a word from English, for example: Wi-fi.)
The symbols you see are called Diacritics, or diacrítos. They usually indicate where to put emphasis on a word. Here are the symbols with their names:
Acute ‘: Shows emphasis
Circumflex ^: Shows emphasis, you will typically open you mouth more.
Grave `: Doesn’t change pronunciation, is used to show a preposition.
Tilde ~: Nasal sound
Cedilla ç: Sounds like an S
Of course, none of this beats actually hearing what the words sound like. I’ve looked on Youtube for some videos with native pronunciation, and I’ll include links here to them. Don’t worry if you don’t understand what they’re saying, take note of how they are pronouncing the words.
Accented Words in Brazilian Portuguese
Another video on Accented Words
Vowels aren’t the only words pronounced differently in Portuguese. Like in many romance languages, the letter R can have different sounds. It can be the “rolling” R like you hear in Spanish, it can be completely silent like in the city name “Rio de Janeiro”, or it can elongate the previous vowel.
How R is pronounced is even up for debate in Brazil. Regional accents will make a huge difference in how certain words are pronounced. I’ll include a link to a newscast below where they interview people from different regions to show just how different R can be. It’s pretty funny and worth a watch:
Regional Differences in the Letter R
Other letters that may have unexpected sounds would be the letters C, L, M and N.
C can sound like an S or a K depending on the word. The rule is, if an E or I comes after the C it is pronounced as S. If an A, O, or U comes after the C, it is pronounced as K.
L, M and N at the end of the word are said with an “open sound”. You won’t hear a “hard” L or M, but rather an elongation of the vowel before it.
If you want to hear some of these words for yourself, I recommend visiting an online dictionary that has voice recordings. My favorite is Dicio.
Some words you can look up are: Cedo, Criar, Homem, Glúten, and Papel.
Lastly, Digraphs are considered unique and tricky to pronounce in Brazilian Portuguese. This is when two letters combine to make a unique sound.
Nh and Lh are particularly tricky, and show up commonly in many words like “Filho” and “Caminho”.
The sound they make will be slightly nasal, but it’s best if you hear them for yourself.
Pronouncing Digraphs – LH, CH, NH
I hope you found this post helpful, and make sure to continue to listen to words if you aren’t sure of their pronunciation. There are a lot of exceptions to rules when it comes to sound.
As a bonus, check out this video on the different regional accents in Brazil. This one isn’t focused on the letter R, but just goes over some differences in general!