Portuguese

Orthography

Portuguese, by virtue of having several spelling reforms starting as early as the 18th century, has one of the most phonemic writing systems in the world.

Portuguese is an interesting case study because historically its writing system has had all the problems of English. It is also a world language and the differences in dialects between one country and another is as profound as between English speaking countries. Portuguese is a romance language, essentially a dialect of Latin and Spanish that acquired its own orthography in the 13th century just before it became one of the numerically strongest languages in the world. Prior to 1400, Portuguese had been written in Hebrew and Arabic as well as the Roman alphabet.

The academia das ciencias was founded in Lisbon in 1779 to play a significant role in regulating the orthography. Brazil founded its own Academia Brasileira de Letras in 1896. There have been many reforms over the years. Spelling conventions were signed between Portugal and Brazil in 1943 and again in 1945 that abolished silent consonants and simplified the use of accents and apostrophes. Brazil went ahead and abolished etymologically motivated unpronounced consonants while Portugal continues to write such C's (e.g., adoptar/adotar, director/diretor).

Grapheme deficiency is certainly not limited to English. Brazil has a similar problem trying to represent 9 vowel phonemes with 5 graphemes. The difference is that Portugeuse copes with the problem by using three accent marks: the acute, grave, and circumflex. *Se' is pronounced /say/.(se:) Avô (accent circumflex) is pronunced ahvoh/avo'. Avó (accent acute) is pronounced ahvaw/a,vo,. With no accent the stress would be on the first syllable. Avo/ 'Ah-vah. O'vo/o,vos

This writing system is probably best known to spelling reformers as the prototype for Follick spelling. Follick had a number of strange looking (but consistent) spellings which made it easy to ridicule. *A high chair, for instance, would be written in Follick (or Portugues) as Ei hai tcheir.

In most languages the first letter of the alphabet is AH not EI or AE. ABC in English would be written ei, bi, si. This would be almost a total mismatch. The first three letters in most Romance languages is ah beh seh.

ey ee ay ou yu   is   ei i: ai ou iu

Portuguese, in common with all Romance or Latin based languages, spells the /ah/ sound with an a.

*father would be probably spelled *fader. (the English eth sound is missing in Portuguese) not and hot would also be spelled nat and hat. To open up the sound, the a could have an acute accent.

Hat would probably be spelled het. Portuguese does not have an /ash/ sound /ae/. Net would be spelled net

Cottage would be spelled catij in Portuguese.

Sound

Askybet
ASCII

Sound
Spell

IPA
phonetic

Nu Folik
Follick

Portuguese
example

Menu
Spelling

English
example words
ah aa
æ ah-eh
uh
ei
air
ar ahr

o  å
a
u
A
Ar /eh-uh/
or ar

o
a

ei

A

 a:
ae
^
ei

 a: aa
a
u  a'
ei  e:
er
ar
 caro
fé (no example)
cama
leite
rua		 cahr-aw
feh
cah-muh
ay
ay-'r, ehr
ahr		 car, are, doll, odd, alpha
ash, at, ax
up, abut, cup, come
eight, they, eta, faint, age
hair, tear
are, car, far, jar
eh
ee
ear

e
E
Er ih-uh

e
j
-


i
i:

 e
i:   ie
ir		 fé, --
aqui
rua		 eh
ah-key
rhoo-uh		 etch, egg
eat, eel
hear, here
ih
ai /ah-ee/
ih-uh

i
I
i^, iu

i
ai
iu

I
ai
ic

 i
y `i ai ay
ia'  i'
 fácil, vista
vai, mais, pais
tia		 fah-sihl
vees-tuh
vah-ee
chee-uh
í 		index, it, ill
haiku, eye, ice
Asia,
ah
owe
awe
ou
oi
or

o
O
N
M, No
oi
Or

o
ou
phi
au
oi
ouR


ou
c:, cu
cw
oi
uw:

 o  a: aa
o'  ou
o:  oa
au  
oi
or		 fácil
novo
vou
mau
-
bóia
-		 fáh-sil
noh-vuh
voh
mah-aw
-
-		 ox*, pot, watch
oak, oat
all, hawk, talk, ox*
owl, out, towel
oil, boy, toy
ore, tore
uh,
uhr
up
ooze
hook
yew

/
R
^, u
U
J
Y
R
c
w
u
yw


:


Juw

 u  '
'r  r
u
u:  uu
u'  uu
iu		 mesa
rua
uva
porque
iu
 me(i)-suh
ú
oo-vuh
por-kay
yoo		 ago, acute
hut
hoop
hook
ewe