Portuguese Accents: Acute, Circumflex, Tilde, Grave and Cedilla

Accents in Portuguese aren't decoration. They show stress, vowel quality and nasalisation, and they can change a word's meaning.

The marks

Mark	Name	Effect	Example
á é í ó ú	acute (agudo)	stressed, open vowel	café, avó
â ê ô	circumflex (circunflexo)	stressed, closed vowel	você, avô, lâmpada
ã õ	tilde (til)	nasal vowel	irmã, limões
à	grave (crase)	contraction of a + a	Vou à praia.
ç	cedilla (cê cedilhado)	makes c sound like s	coração, almoço

Pairs where accents matter

Without	Meaning	With	Meaning
avó	grandmother	avô	grandfather
pode	can (present)	pôde	could (past)
por	by, for	pôr	to put
tem	he/she has	têm	they have
vem	he/she comes	vêm	they come
a	the, to	à	to the

The circumflex in têm and vêm marks the plural of ter and vir: eles têm, eles vêm.

The crase

The crase (à) marks the merging of the preposition a with the article a:

• Vou à escola. — I'm going to school. (a + a)
• Vou ao mercado. — I'm going to the market. (a + o)
• Falei à professora. — I spoke to the teacher.

Before masculine nouns, you use ao, with no accent.

Stress rules in brief

1. Words ending in a, e, o, as, es, os, em, ens are usually stressed on the second-to-last syllable: casa, homem.
2. Words ending in i, u, l, r, z, im, um, ão are usually stressed on the last syllable: animal, falar.
3. An accent shows an exception: café, você, fácil, médico.

Spelling reform

A spelling agreement, now widely in force, unified spelling between Brazil, Portugal and other Portuguese-speaking countries and removed some accents, for example the circumflex in vôo, now voo.

Typing accents

On most phones, long-press a vowel for the accented options. On a Portuguese keyboard layout, they have their own keys. If you can't type them, try searching without the accent and compare results.

Common mistakes

1. Writing "voce" or "cafe" without accents.
2. Using à before masculine nouns.
3. Confusing avó and avô.

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