Portuguese

Portuguese is spoken not only in Portugal but also in Brazil, the islands of Madeira and the Azores; Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Macao, Angola and Mozambique.

Spelling and pronunciation

The Portuguese alphabet has twenty-four letters. k is used for European words such as kilogram and kilometre. W and y are not used.

Word endings

There are only five possible consonant endings in addition to the vowels They are l m r s z.

There is a tendency for this to influence spelling of new words in English where /t/ or /d/ are heard.. The letter e may be added. This is easily recognisable in inteligente, permanente but can cause confusion in mad/made, hat/hate, fat/fate and so on. (Care needs to be taken in dictionary work.).

k and ck as in cheque

Making plurals

Generally, words ending l drop it and add is; those ending in m change to ns; those ending r and es;

Blends

In Portuguese the blend ch always has the soft pronunciation as in wish. This often causes confusion with ship/chip/sheep/cheap/shop/chop and many more. In some words this sound is represented by the letter x (initially or in consonant clusters). This occurs more often in the language of Brazil.

th does not occur. This sound is not represented. Learners of English may attempt to express it as d.

ph does not occur in Portuguese spelling. The sound is always represented by f as in telefone, fotógrafo, elefante, física

Accents

Accents are used to change syllable stress and vowel quality. The spoken language has a nasal quality which is represented in spelling by following vowel sounds with m or n . Also, ã and õ are nasal vowels.

education/educação intention/intenção profession/profissão

Misc

h at the beginning of a word is 'silent' but influences the vowel which it precedes.

There are numerous vowels and diphthongs. The following patterns are often used by learners: Thailand, weight

Reading aloud

As there is no w the 'question words may present some difficulty for beginners and they are likely to need models.

Brazilian speakers may read te and de as tch and dj. Initial r or - rr -may sound like a throaty h.

Grammar

Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, articles and determiners all have gender.

it may be expressed as he or she.

The first person pronoun is not always necessary. It is normally written with a small letter.Pupils may need to be reminded to use the capital I

The same word is used to express the indefinite article and the number one. There are exceptions, but generally adjectives follow the noun as in educação física / physical education; They agree in number and gender, as in sapatos pretos / shoes black(s).

Vocabulary

Bilingual dictionaries usually indicate (Braz.) or (Port) where there are variants. It is important to be aware of these. An everyday word in one country may have different connotations in the other. Apart from this, younger pupils may be offered a translation that has no meaning for them.

Handwriting

Children may have beautiful cursive handwriting but have difficulty trying to adapt it to the style used by their helpers. Some print as they try to identify the letters of unknown words. Practice may be needed for joining k, w and y as these letters do not occur in Portuguese. The letter r is written Continental style.

Numbers

Note the use of point and comma are the other way round:-

One thousand 1,000 becomes 1.000

Decimal place 0,5

Calendar

Weekdays are numbered; Monday being the second day of the week, through to Friday which is the sixth.

• Sunday - domingo
• Monday - segunda-feira / segunda / 2a
• Tuesday - terça-feira / third / 3a
• Wednesday - quarta-feira / fourth / 4a
• Thursday - quinta-feira / fifth / 5a
• Friday - sexta-feira / sixth / 6a
• Saturday - sábado

Sunday is written with a small 'd' unless it is the name of a special Sunday.

The calendar months are easy to recognise because they start with the same letters as the English names.

A hora de brincar - playtime

A hora de recreio - break

A hora de almoço - lunch/dinner-time

Related information

Subject spelling lists (in MS Word format) - lists vocabulary for a variety of subjects including Maths, English, Art and DT.