Portuguese Alphabet: Til, Ç and Brazil vs Portugal Spellings

How many letters does the Portuguese alphabet have, and what are they called?

Twenty-six: the Portuguese alphabet is the same a to z as English. That is the count in Base I of the Acordo Ortográfico (opens in a new tab), the spelling agreement signed in Lisbon on 16 December 1990. Its signatories were Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe. Each letter has a small and a capital form, and the Acordo prints a name beside each one:

Letter	Name	Letter	Name	Letter	Name
a	á	j	jota	s	esse
b	bê	k	capa or cá	t	tê
c	cê	l	ele	u	u
d	dê	m	eme	v	vê
e	é	n	ene	w	dáblio
f	efe	o	ó	x	xis
g	gê or guê	p	pê	y	ípsilon
h	agá	q	quê	z	zê
i	i	r	erre

The Acordo calls these names of the Portuguese letters suggestions that do not rule out other ways of saying them. Two letters already come with a choice: g is gê or guê, k is capa or cá.

Right under the list, Base I adds that besides these letters Portuguese uses ç, cê cedilhado, and seven digraphs: rr, ss, ch, lh, nh, gu and qu. So ç is a c with a cedilla, not a twenty-seventh letter, and lh and nh are pairs of letters with one sound. The grid at the top of this page follows the same line. It shows the Unicode CLDR's index headings for Portuguese (opens in a new tab), A to Z, and lists ç with the accented vowels under it.

Why did k, w and y join the Portuguese alphabet?

Because Portuguese already wrote them. The Acordo's explanatory note gives three reasons for listing k, w and y. Dictionaries record a fair number of words that start with them. Learners need to know where they stand in the alphabet. And in the African countries where Portuguese is official, many words are spelled with them.

Joining the Portuguese alphabet did not set them free. The note keeps the old restrictions, because other letters already write the same sounds. Base I says where the three belong:

• names of people from other languages and their derivatives: Franklin, frankliniano; Darwin, darwinismo; Taylor, taylorista.
• names of places from other languages: Kwanza, Kuwait, kuwaitiano; Malawi, malawiano.
• abbreviations, symbols and international units: KLM, K for potassium, W for west, kg, km, kW, yd.

Brazil's Decreto 6.583 of 29 September 2008 brought the Acordo into force there from 1 January 2009. Old and new spelling coexisted for a transition that a 2012 decree stretched to 31 December 2015.

Why do Portugal and Brazil write facto and fato, género and gênero?

Because they say them differently, and the Acordo lets the spelling follow the pronunciation. The Portuguese alphabet is the same on both sides; only some words differ. The explanatory note says the text unifies about ninety-eight percent of the general vocabulary and keeps the rest as double spellings on purpose. Both forms in each row below are correct Portuguese:

Portugal and Africa	Brazil	Why both stand, per the Acordo
facto	fato	the c is said in Portugal and silent in Brazil
receção	recepção	the other way round: the p is silent in Portugal
género, António, académico	gênero, Antônio, acadêmico	e and o before m or n sound open in Portugal and Africa, closed in much of Brazil
ténis, bónus, Vénus	tênis, bônus, Vênus	the same open or closed vowel, in words stressed on the syllable before last
bebé, puré, guiché	bebê, purê, guichê	a final stressed e, mostly in words from French

The open vowel takes the acute and the closed one the circumflex, so each country's accent shows its own sound. The a before m or n does not split this way, the Acordo notes. It sounds closed nearly everywhere, so câmara, pânico and dinâmico carry a circumflex on both sides.

Where no educated pronunciation says a consonant, the Acordo removed it for everyone. Portugal had kept the silent c and p of acção, director and óptimo long after Brazil dropped them. Now ação, diretor and ótimo are the only spellings.

Film subtitles show how slowly habits move. FrequencyWords keeps separate word lists for European and Brazilian Portuguese. In the European list, óptimo, acção, bebé and género all come ahead of ótimo, ação, bebê and gênero. In the Brazilian list every one of those pairs comes out the other way. The Portuguese words on this page come from the European list, which is why óptimo sits among the ó words on this page.

Which Portuguese vowels can carry the til?

Only a, unless a diphthong follows. Base VI of the Acordo spells out how a nasal vowel is written at the end of a word. If the vowel is a, it takes the til: afã, lã, órfã. Any other nasal vowel ends a word with an m, as in clarim and tom. Before an s it takes an n instead, as in flautins and semitons. So Portuguese has ã but no ẽ or ĩ at the end of a word.

The other home of the til is the nasal diphthong. Base VII counts four written with a til, in today's standard language:

Diphthong	Examples in the Acordo
ãe	cães, Guimarães, mãe
ãi	cãibra
ão	mão, não, sótão, tão
õe	Camões, orações, põe

The diphthong table is the whole story of õ. In standard spelling it appears only in õe, never alone. The Portuguese word data behind this page agrees: its commonest õ words are milhões, informações, põe and razões, all with õe. WikiPron transcribes milhões as /miʎõj̃s/, with the nasal sign on both the o and the glide. In both subtitle lists, every õ word but one has õe, and the odd one out is naõ, a slip for não.

Base VII also mentions ũi, as in the popular form rũi for ruim, but muito and mui keep that sound without a til, by tradition.

Why does só lose its accent in somente, while irmã keeps its til?

Because the Acordo treats the marks differently: the acute and the circumflex go, while the til, which writes a nasal vowel, stays. Base XIII drops the acute or circumflex when an adverb in -mente or a word with a suffix starting in z is built on an accented word. Base VI 2º does the opposite for the til.

Built on	Accent	Derived word	What happens to the mark
só	acute	somente	dropped
fácil	acute	facilmente	dropped
português	circumflex	portuguesmente	dropped
café	acute	cafezada	dropped
avô	circumflex	avozinho	dropped
irmã	til	irmãmente	kept
manhã	til	manhãzinha	kept
órfão	acute and til	orfãozinho	the acute goes, the til stays
bênção	circumflex and til	bençãozinha	the circumflex goes, the til stays

The last two rows show the rule cleanly: one word, two marks, and only the acute or the circumflex leaves.

What did Portuguese spelling drop: the trema, and the grave on every vowel but a?

The trema, the two dots of ü, is gone from Portuguese words. Base XIV removes it outright, even in poetry: saudade, not saüdade, and aguentar, cinquenta, linguista and tranquilo without dots. It survives only in words built on foreign names, such as mülleriano from Müller.

Brazil had already cut it back once. Its Lei 5.765 of 1971 (opens in a new tab) abolished the trema in unstressed hiatus. After that, the Acordo's note says, it stayed only in gu and qu where the u is said, as in eloquente. The Unicode CLDR now files ü among the auxiliary characters for Portuguese. Brazilian subtitles still write tranqüilo and freqüência now and then, well behind tranquilo and frequência.

The same 1971 law took away the circumflex that only told homographs apart, except on pôde. It also dropped the circumflex and grave that marked secondary stress in words with -mente or a suffix in z. The law is printed in the spelling of its day: its title says portuguêsa, and its text writes têrmos and emprêsas.

Of the Portuguese accent marks, the grave has the narrowest job left. Base XII uses it only where the preposition a merges with a feminine article or a demonstrative: à, às, àquele, àquela, àquilo, àqueloutro. CLDR's main set for Portuguese (opens in a new tab) still lists ò, but the Acordo's text never writes it, against dozens of à. The subtitle words behind this page's Portuguese lists hold no ò word that survives the word filters: the last to go was schirò, which Wiktionary (opens in a new tab) lists only as an Italian surname.

Which Portuguese keyboard types ç, ã and õ: European, Brazilian or US?

Any of Microsoft's three Portuguese keyboard layouts types every mark Portuguese needs, capitals included. A check of the Portuguese (opens in a new tab), Portuguese (Brazil ABNT) (opens in a new tab) and Portuguese (Brazil ABNT2) (opens in a new tab) layouts, read on 2026-10-14, found the same plan on all three:

Key	Alone	With Shift
the ç key	ç	Ç
the acute dead key	´ then a vowel: á é í ó ú	` then a vowel: à and the other graves
the tilde dead key	~ then a or o: ã õ	^ then a vowel: â ê ô

A dead key types nothing by itself: press it, let go, then press the letter, with Shift for a capital such as à or Ê. Where each layout puts these keys is drawn on the Portuguese keyboard page. The layouts differ in the diaeresis. The two Brazilian ones put the ¨ dead key on Shift+6, the European one behind AltGr, although the Acordo took the trema out of Portuguese words. The Italian alphabet page shows the contrast: Microsoft's Italian layout has no key for any accented capital.

On a US keyboard the marks take two steps. On a Mac, Option+N followed by A gives ã, and Option+C types ç by itself. Option+E followed by a vowel gives á, é, í, ó or ú, and Option+I followed by a vowel gives â, ê or ô. On Windows, an Alt code types each one, as listed in the steps and the Alt code table on this page. The a with accent page compares á, â, ã and à, and c with cedilla explains the -ção ending.