Pronunciation and the sound–spelling gap

This is the longest chapter in the handbook, and the reason is simple: Brazilian Portuguese is written one way and spoken another. bom dia is not "bom dee-a". It is bong JEE-ah. Until that gap closes, every other chapter is decorative.

You do not need to produce these sounds well. You need to know what a written word will sound like, so that you can recognise it when it comes at you.

The example words in the rule tables below are all from the core list in chapter 02, where each one is translated. The Examples section at the end of this chapter gives English for everything.

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Grammar

1. Vowels

The two bolded rows are the highest-value rules in the chapter. Final -e is i. Final -o is u. Apply them to every word you read.

2. Nasal vowels — the hard part

A nasal vowel is one where air goes out through the nose. English has no true ones. A vowel is nasal when it carries a tilde (ã, õ) or is followed by m or n at the end of a syllable.

In the respelling, ng means nasalize the vowel before it. There is no g sound. pão is not "pown-guh".

Two traps: - muito is nasal even though nothing marks it. → MWEEN-too - -ão in a plural becomes -ões → OYNGS. cartão → cartões (kar-TOYNGS)

3. The letter R — never an English R

caro (expensive) and carro (car) differ only in this. KAH-roo vs KAH-hoo.

4. Palatalization — ti and di

Before an i sound, t becomes ch and d becomes j. Because final -e becomes i, this fires constantly at the ends of words.

5. Final -l becomes w

6. Other consonants

7. Where the stress falls

Three rules, in order:

1. Written accent wins. café, médico, ônibus, fácil, você. If you see an accent, stress it.
2. Word ends in -a, -e, -o, -m, -s → stress the second-to-last syllable. casa, gente, carro, falam, amigos.
3. Word ends in anything else (-r, -l, -z, -i, -u, -im, -ão) → stress the last syllable. falar, hotel, vez, pão, ruim.

8. Words run together

Brazilians blend across word boundaries, and unstressed vowels shrink. Written and spoken diverge further at speed:

These reduced forms are normal in speech at every social level. You will see tá, tô, and pra written in messages too. This handbook shows the full form first and the reduced form in brackets.

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Examples

Every word here is from the core list in chapter 02. Read the middle column aloud, ignore the left one.

The pair drills

Say these as pairs. Each isolates one rule.