Portuguese Accent Letters: Copy and Paste á â ã à ç é ê õ

Portuguese uses twelve accented letters: á â ã à ç é ê í ó ô õ ú. Click any letter above to copy it. To type them, use Alt + 0227 for ã on Windows, or Option + N then a on a Mac.

The same letters are used in Brazil and Portugal. A handful of words take a different accent in each country, which is covered below.

The Portuguese accent marks

Acute vs circumflex

Both marks show where the stress falls. The difference is the vowel quality. The acute gives an open sound and the circumflex a closed one. The classic pair is avó (grandmother, open o) and avô (grandfather, closed o).

Til: nasal vowels

The til turns a vowel nasal, so some of the sound goes through the nose. It appears in very common words: não (no), mãe (mother), irmã (sister) and the plural ending -ões. Unlike the other marks, the til does not always show stress: in órfã the stress falls on the first syllable. For more on this mark across languages, see tilde letters.

Crase: à

The grave accent appears almost only on à. It shows that the preposition a has merged with the article a, as in "Vou à praia" (I am going to the beach). This merger is called crase. It also appears in àquele and àquela.

Cedilha: ç

ç sounds like s and is used before a, o and u, where a plain c would sound like k. Examples are coração (heart), açúcar (sugar) and Açores. It never starts a word in Portuguese.

Brazil vs Portugal

Brazilian and European Portuguese use the same letters. Where the vowel is pronounced differently, the spelling follows the local sound. In Brazil many of these vowels are closed, so they take a circumflex. In Portugal they are open, so they take an acute.

If you are writing for one market, pick that country's spelling and keep it consistent.

The trema is gone

The trema (ü) used to mark a spoken u after g or q, as in lingüiça and tranqüilo. The 1990 Orthographic Agreement removed it, and Brazil applied the change from 2009. The words are now spelled linguiça and tranquilo. The ü stays only in foreign names and words derived from them, such as Müller.

How to type Portuguese letters

Capital letters

On a Mac or in Word, use the same shortcut as the lowercase letter and press Shift with the letter. Option + Shift + C gives Ç on a Mac. For more on capitals, see capital letters with accent marks.

Alt codes need the number pad with Num Lock on. For other Windows methods, read the Windows accent guide.

Brazilian ABNT2 keyboard

Keyboards sold in Brazil use the ABNT2 layout. It has a dedicated Ç key and dead keys for the acute, grave, circumflex and tilde: press the accent key, then the vowel. If you use a US keyboard, the US International layout gives similar dead keys, and ' then c gives ç.

Phones

Press and hold a vowel or c on iPhone or Android to pick the accented form. Adding a Portuguese keyboard also gives you Portuguese autocorrect. See accents on iPhone and Android.

Ordinal indicators ª and º

Portuguese writes ordinals with a raised a or o: 1º (primeiro), 2ª (segunda). These are separate characters, not accents, and they are included in the grid above. They are also used in Spanish, covered on our Spanish accent letters page.