Portuguese Alphabet

Learn how to say the Portuguese alphabet

 

Need more Portuguese? Try the Portuguese courses at Udemy, the audio and video lessons at Portuguesepod101.com, and the Portuguese Interlinear book (with English translations below the Portuguese text)

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3. Portuguese Alphabet

The Portuguese alphabet has 26 letters. Listen to how to say it:

 

a	a	k	ká	u	u
b	bê	l	éle	v	vê
c	cê	m	ême	w	dábliu
d	dê	n	êne	x	xis
e	ê	o	o	y	ípsolon
f	éfe	p	pê	z	zê
g	gê	q	quê
h	agá	r	érre
i	i	s	ésse
j	jota	t	tê

The letter ç (cê cedilha) is not considered a separate letter in the alphabet.

Spelling changes as of January 2009:

The letters K, W and Y are now officially part of the alphabet, though they had always been used anyway;
The deletion of diaeresis (trema: ¨) in words with gue, gui, que and qui, as: aguentar, arguir, cinquenta, tranquilo, etc;  
The deletion of differential accent in the words "pára/para", "péla/pela", "pêlo/pelo", "pólo/polo" and "pêra/pera" is gone also, but it stands unchanged in the verbs "pôr", "poder" and others that use the accent as way to differentiate from singular and plural (i.e.: tem/têm);
The deletion of acute accent in open diphthongs ói and éi from paroxytones (i.e.: alcaloide, apoia, boia, colmeia);
The deletion of acute accent on stressed i and u after diphthongs in paroxytone words (i.e.: feiura);
The deletion of circumflex accent on words with êem and ôo(s) endings (i.e.: leem, voo, enjoo);
The deletion of hyphen in compound words whose second element begins with S or R, which shall be doubled (i.e.: antirracismo, antissocial), and in cases where there are vowels in both the first element's ending and the second element's beginning (i.e.: antiaéreo, autoestrada).

 

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