Talk:Portuguese orthography

Previous discussions
Note: this article on the Orthography of Portuguese was originally split from Portuguese alphabet. Previous discussions can be found at Talk: Portuguese alphabet. FilipeS 17:54, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Dark L
Is "l" sometimes pronounced "ł"? If so, it should be included in the footnotes of the chart. 24.91.9.206 00:29, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I have added it to the table, although it's an allophone of the regular L. FilipeS 12:27, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

About the revert
-- I thought my explanation about hiatus was OK (my other edits were superfluous, i agree). Also, i used to think that Amazônia could be separated as A-ma-zô-nia (that's how it was taught to me), but that it was also acceptable to consider them as proparoxytones ("proparoxítonas relativas"). Do you have any good references about it? --Yuu en 21:20, 1 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi. I agree that your explanation of the accentuation of hiatuses was correct, and it actually makes the article clearer, so I have reverted it. :)
 * As for words like Amazônia (I know them as "proparoxítonas aparentes"), I had also edited the article already, to delete the word "hyphenation", which was incorrect. At line breaks, of course, it is "forbidden" to leave a letter alone, so a hyphenation like "Amazôni-a" will never be written in practice. However, my intention there was to explain why these kinds of words are accented differently in Spanish and Portuguese. I think it is useful, for accentuation purposes only, to think of "Amazônia" as "A-ma-zô-ni-a" in Portuguese. In fact, even the terms "proparoxítona relativa" and "proparoxítona aparente" indicate that they are indeed interpreted as paroxytones, of sorts. I hope you'll agree. Regards. FilipeS 12:27, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

-em and -êm
Why are these given separate cells in the diphthong chart if they have the same sound? — kwami (talk) 20:56, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

São and Conceição
The Diacritics section of the page formerly stated that "São" is a short form of "Conceição." I don't think that's correct. "São" is the title for a named saint, e.g. São Francisco, São Paulo, etc. "Conceição" is a word meaning "conception" that is sometimes used as a name (e.g. Maria da Conceição de...), historically in reference to the conception of Jesus. While both can be religious terms, they are not related words. The são/ção idea may or may not be valid (I've never heard it before), but São/Conceição is not a valid example. I have edited the page to that effect. Please correct me if I am wrong. Shepshep 14:15, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Useless article
Compared to some other guides on-line, this article is pretty much useless. It's ill-structured, incomplete, confusing, lacking in examples and a general jumble. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.86.190 (talk) 23:13, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Very confusing "explanation"
This is a nightmare and includes a double negative and mixed terminology (antepenult and paroxytone in the same sentence). The phrase "words may be accented" sounds like the writer can choose whether to accent them.

'''All words stressed on the antepenult take an accent mark. Words with two or more syllables, stressed on their last syllable, is not accented if ending with any consonant letter but m and s, or when ending in -i, -is, -im, -u, -us, -um, except in hiatuses as in açaí, but the paroxytones words may be accented when ended in those cases for differentiating from oxytones words, as in lápis. '''

It would be a lot clearer if it read as follows:

'''If the third syllable from the end is stressed, it takes an accent mark. '''

'''If the second syllable from the end is accented, it does not take an accent mark. (Most words) However, it might take an accent to differentiate it from another word that is spelled the same way. '''

If the last syllable is stressed, it does not take an accent unless the word ends in I, IM, IS, M, U, UM, US or S. 

'''If the the last syllable is stressed, it takes an accent if the word ends in two vowels that would otherwise be a diphthong, for example: açaí. '''

If this is wrong, it's because the original explanation was confusing.

Capital diacritics
It would be nice to include capital versions of the diacritics. 2605:E000:2E52:FA00:BD2D:FAA:1713:2778 (talk) 22:41, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Sound change from Latin ap to Portuguese oi?
In the section about etymological considerations there is a reference to certain instances of  corresponding to Latin  and . I’m familiar with the latter but not the former. Are there any examples of this? --Oscararon (talk) 09:14, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

No ⟨¿⟩ ⟨¡⟩.?
why portuguese lacks inverted question/exclamation mark? although it can be freely used by portuguese speaking people around the world. 182.253.54.120 (talk) 15:52, 13 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Hi, see WP:TALKNO. Article talk pages are for discussing the state of their articles, not forums for general questions and chat. Anyway, there's only one language (Spanish) in the world, I believe, that uses the inverted marks. There's no more reason to ask why Portuguese doesn't than why English doesn't. Largoplazo (talk) 21:23, 13 May 2024 (UTC)