H:IPA-PT

Help:IPA/Portuguese

Help:IPA/Portuguese

The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Portuguese language pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see Template:IPA and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters.

Distinction is made between the two major standards of the language—Portugal (European Portuguese, EP; broadly the standard also used in Africa and in Asia) and Brazil (Brazilian Portuguese, BP). Neither variant is preferred at Wikipedia, except in cases where a local pronunciation is clearly more relevant, such as a place in Brazil or an individual from Portugal.

See Portuguese phonology for a more thorough look at the sounds of Portuguese.

More information Consonants, IPA ...

Notes

  1. [1]
    In northern and central Portugal, /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/ are lenited to fricatives of the same place of articulation ([β], [ð], and [ɣ], respectively) in all places except after a pause, a nasal vowel, or (for /d/) /l/, when they are stops [b, d, ɡ], not dissimilar from English b, d, g (Mateus & d'Andrade 2000:11).
  2. [2]
    In most varieties of Brazilian Portuguese, /d, t/ are affricated to [dʒ, tʃ] before the close front vowels /i, ĩ/.
  3. [3]
    Final /l/ is vocalized to [w] in Standard Brazilian Portuguese.
  4. [4]
    The fricative /ʁ/ has a considerable variation in Brazil, often being a voiceless velar [x] or glottal fricative [h], or the voiced variants [ɣ ~ ɦ] in standard speech. Uvular variants such as [χ] and [ʁ] that are typical of Portugal also occur in Brazil. See also Guttural R in Portuguese.
  5. [5]
    The rhotic consonants /ɾ/ ⟨r⟩ and /ʁ/ ⟨rr⟩ contrast only between vowels. Otherwise, they are in complementary distribution, with /ʁ/ occurring word-initially, after ⟨l⟩, ⟨n⟩, and ⟨s⟩ and in compounds; /ɾ/ is found elsewhere. In the word-final position, they are neutralized in favor of /ɾ/ in Portugal and some Brazilian dialects and in favor of /ʁ/ in most Brazilian dialects (which is how it is transcribed in this guide).
  6. [6]
    The four coronal fricatives /s, z, ʃ, ʒ/ are neutralized at the end of a syllable. They are voiced before a voiced consonant or a vowel and voiceless elsewhere. In Standard European Portuguese, they are postalveolar [ʃ, ʒ] before consonants and only [ʃ] before pauses; before vowels, only the voiced alveolar [z] appears. In Brazilian Portuguese, the typical pronunciation in all positions is alveolar [s, z], but in some dialects they are postalveolar as in Portugal.
  7. [7]
    Intervocalic glides are ambisyllabic, they are part of previous falling diphthongs and they are geminated to next syllable onset. Examples of such pronunciations are goiaba [ɡojˈjabɐ] and Cauã for [kawˈwɐ̃].
  8. [8]
    Most Brazilian dialects have the close /ɐ/ in the stressed diphthong spelled ⟨ai⟩ before /m/ and /n/. In many dialects it is also nasalized. Many speakers of those dialects, including broadcast media, use the open /a/ for some words like Jaime and Roraima.
  9. [9]
    First-person plural past tense in European Portuguese has the open /a/, and present tense has the close /ɐ/. Both conjugated with the close /ɐ/ in Brazilian Portuguese
  10. [10]
    In Standard Lisbon Portuguese, /e/ merges with /ɐ/ when it comes before palatal sounds.
  11. [11]
    There are no diphthongs before palatal consonants, so hiatuses are not indicated before /ɲ/ (e.g. rainha /ʁaˈiɲɐ/).
  12. [12]
    The [ow] diphthong does not exist in Standard Lisbon Portuguese, having been monophthongized to [o] (see Cruz-Ferreira 1999:128, 130).
  13. [13]
    In Brazilian Portuguese, pre-stressed [ɐ] is obligatory only before /ɲ/ and has a tendency to be raised before other nasal consonants. In many dialects, nasalization is obligatory also before /ɲ/.
  14. [14]
    /ɨ/ is often deleted in European Portuguese.
  15. [15]
    Some of the post-stressed high vowels in hiatuses, as in frio ('cold') and rio ('river'), may vary between a reduced vowel [ˈfɾi.u] and a glide [ˈfɾiw], exceptions are verbal conjugations, forming pairs like eu rio [ˈew ˈʁi.u] (I laugh) and ele riu [ˈelɨ ˈʁiw] (he laughed).
  16. [16]
    Nasal vowels in Portuguese are /ɐ̃/, /ẽ/, /ĩ/, /õ/ and /ũ/

References

  • Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1999). "Portuguese (European)". In International Phonetic Association (ed.). Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Cambridge University Press. pp. 126–130. ISBN 0-521-63751-1.
  • Mateus, Maria Helena; d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000). The Phonology of Portuguese. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-823581-X.

See also
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article H:IPA-PT, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.