The phonology of Portuguese can vary between dialects, in extreme cases leading to some difficulties in intelligibility. This article focuses on the pronunciations that are generally regarded as standard. Since Portuguese is a pluricentric language, and differences between European Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) can be considerable, both varieties are distinguished whenever necessary.
One of the most salient differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese is their prosody.[1] European Portuguese is a stress-timed language, with reduction, devoicing or even deletion of unstressed vowels and a general tolerance of syllable-final consonants. Brazilian Portuguese, on the other hand, is of mixed characteristics,[2] and varies according to speech rate, sex and dialect. At fast speech rates, Brazilian Portuguese is more stress-timed, while in slow speech rates, it can be more syllable-timed. The accents of rural, southern Rio Grande do Sul and the Northeast (especially Bahia) are considered to sound more syllable-timed than the others, while the southeastern dialects such as the mineiro, in central Minas Gerais, the paulistano, of the northern coast and eastern regions of São Paulo, and the fluminense, along Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo and eastern Minas Gerais as well the Federal District, are most frequently essentially stress-timed. Also, male speakers of Brazilian Portuguese speak faster than female speakers and speak in a more stress-timed manner,[3] and with a lighter reduction of unstressed vowels, less raising of pre-stress vowels, less devoicing and fewer deletions.
Brazilian Portuguese disallows some closed syllables:[1] coda nasals are deleted with concomitant nasalization of the preceding vowel, even in learned words; coda /l/ becomes [w], except for conservative velarization at the extreme south and rhotacism in remote rural areas in the center of the country; the coda rhotic is usually deleted entirely when word-final, specially in verbs in infinitive; and /i/ can be epenthesized after almost all other coda-final consonants. This tends to produce words almost entirely composed of open syllables, e.g., magma [ˈmaɡimɐ]. In European Portuguese, similarly, epenthesis may occur with [ɨ], as in magma [ˈmaɣɨmɐ] and afta [ˈafɨtɐ].[4]
For more detailed information on regional accents, see Portuguese dialects, and for historical sound changes see History of Portuguese § Historical sound changes.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval Galician-Portuguese system of seven sibilants (/s z/, /ʃ ʒ/, /tʃ/, and apicoalveolar /s̺ z̺/) is still distinguished in spelling (intervocalic c/ç z x g/j ch ss s respectively), but is reduced to the four fricatives /s z ʃ ʒ/ by the merger of /tʃ/ into /ʃ/ and apicoalveolar /s̺ z̺/ into either /s z/ or /ʃ ʒ/ (depending on dialect and syllable position), except in parts of northern Portugal (most notably in the Trás-os-Montes region). These changes are known as deaffrication. Other than this, there have been no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since Old Portuguese. However, several consonant phonemes have special allophones at syllable boundaries (often varying quite significantly between European and Brazilian Portuguese), and a few also undergo allophonic changes at word boundaries. Henceforward, the phrase "at the end of a syllable" can be understood as referring to a position before a consonant or at the end of a word.
Labial | Dental, Alveolar |
Postalveolar, Palatal |
Dorsal | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
plain | labialized | |||||
Nasal | m | n | ɲ | |||
Plosive | voiceless | p | t | (tʃ) | k | (kʷ) |
voiced | b | d | (dʒ) | ɡ | (ɡʷ) | |
Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | ||
voiced | v | z | ʒ | |||
Approximant | semivowel | j | w | |||
lateral | l | ʎ | ||||
Rhotic | trill/fricative | ʁ | ||||
flap | ɾ |
Phonetic notes
There is a variation in the pronunciation of the first consonant of certain clusters, most commonly C or P in cç, ct, pç and pt. These consonants may be variably elided or conserved. For some words, this variation may exist inside a country, sometimes in all of them; for others, the variation is dialectal, with the consonant being always pronounced in one country and always elided in the other. This variation affects 0.5% of the language's vocabulary, or 575 words out of 110,000.[24] In most cases, Brazilians variably conserve the consonant while speakers elsewhere have invariably ceased to pronounce it (for example, detector in Brazil versus detetor in Portugal). The inverse situation is rarer, occurring in words such as fa(c)to and conta(c)to (consonants never pronounced in Brazil, pronounced elsewhere). Until 2009, this reality could not be apprehended from the spelling: while Brazilians did not write consonants that were no longer pronounced, the spelling of the other countries retained them in many words as silent letters, usually when there was still a vestige of their presence in the pronunciation of the preceding vowel. This could give the false impression that European Portuguese was phonologically more conservative in this aspect, when in fact it was Brazilian Portuguese that retained more consonants in pronunciation.
Phoneme | Example | Gloss | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
/f/ | fa(c)to | [ˈfa(k)tu] | 'fact' | |
/p/ | pacto | [ˈpaktu] | 'pacto' | |
/t/ | ta(c)to | [ˈta(k)tu] | 'tact' | |
/ʒ/ | ja(c)to | [ˈʒa(k)tu] | 'jet' | |
/k/ | ca(c)to | [ˈka(k)tu] | 'cactus' |
Unlike its neighbor and relative Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese lacks a tendency to elide any stop, including those that may become a continuant (always fricative in Portuguese) by lenition (/b/ > [β], /d/ > [ð], /ɡ/ > [ɣ]), but it has a number of allophones to it.
In most Brazilian dialects, including the overwhelming majority of the registers of Rio de Janeiro (from where this process is said to have expanded to elsewhere in Brazil),[25] other fluminense-speaking areas, and São Paulo, as well some rural areas of Portugal, the dental stops are affricated to [tʃ] and [dʒ] before /i/, /ĩ/.[26] Post-alveolar affricates also appear in loanwords from languages such as English, Spanish and Japanese (though it is common in Portugal to merge them with the post-alveolar sibilants, as was done with the former native affricate sounds in the Middle Ages).
The two rhotic phonemes /ʁ/ and /ɾ/ contrast only between oral vowels.[27] Elsewhere, their occurrence is predictable by context, with dialectal variations in realization. The rhotic is "hard" (i.e., /ʁ/) in the following circumstances:
It is "soft" (i.e., /ɾ/) when it occurs in syllable onset clusters (e.g., atributo).[28]
The realization of the "hard" rhotic /ʁ/ varies significantly across dialects.
This restricted variation has prompted several authors to postulate a single rhotic phoneme. Câmara (1953) and Mateus & d'Andrade (2000) see the soft as the unmarked realization and that instances of intervocalic [ʁ] result from gemination and a subsequent deletion rule (i.e., carro /ˈkaɾɾo/ > [ˈkaɾʁu] > [ˈkaʁu]). Similarly, Bonet & Mascaró (1997) argue that the hard is the unmarked realization.
In addition to the phonemic variation between /ʁ/ and /ɾ/ between vowels, up to four allophones of the "merged" phoneme /R/ are found in other positions:
The default hard allophone is some sort of voiceless fricative in most dialects, e.g., [χ] [h] [ꭓ] etc., although other variants are also found (e.g., a trill [r] in certain conservative dialects down São Paulo, of Italian-speaking, Spanish-speaking, Arabic-speaking or Slavic-speaking influence, and the other trill [ʀ] in areas of German-speaking, French-speaking and Portuguese-descended influence throughout coastal Brazil down Espírito Santo, most prominently Rio de Janeiro).
The syllable-final allophone shows the greatest variation:
Throughout Brazil, deletion of the word-final rhotic is common, regardless of the "normal" pronunciation of the syllable-final allophone. This pronunciation is particularly common in lower registers, although found in most registers in some areas, e.g., Northeast Brazil, and in the more formal and standard sociolect. It occurs especially in verbs, which always end in R in their infinitive form; in words other than verbs, the deletion is rarer[29] and seems not to occur in monosyllabic non-verb words, such as mar.[30] Evidence of this allophone is often encountered in writing that attempts to approximate the speech of communities with this pronunciation, e.g., the rhymes in the popular poetry (cordel literature) of the Northeast and phonetic spellings (e.g., amá, sofrê in place of amar, sofrer) in Jorge Amado's novels (set in the Northeast) and Gianfrancesco Guarnieri's play Eles não usam black tie (about favela dwellers in Rio de Janeiro).[31][32]
The soft realization is often maintained across word boundaries in close syntactic contexts (e.g., mar azul [ˈmaɾaˈzuw] 'blue sea').[33]
Portuguese has one of the richest vowel phonologies of all Romance languages, having both oral and nasal vowels, diphthongs, and triphthongs. A phonemic distinction is made between close-mid vowels /e o/ and the open-mid vowels /ɛ ɔ/, unlike in Spanish, though there is a certain amount of vowel alternation. European Portuguese has also two near-central vowels, one of which tends to be elided like the e caduc of French.
Like standard Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel height to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables; the vowels /a ɛ e ɔ o/ tend to be raised to [ɐ e i~ɨ o u] (although [ɨ] occurs only in EP) when they are unstressed (see below for details). The dialects of Portugal are characterized by reducing vowels to a greater extent than others. Falling diphthongs are composed of a vowel followed by one of the high vowels /i/ or /u/; although rising diphthongs occur in the language as well, they can be interpreted as hiatuses.
The exact realization of the /ɐ/ varies somewhat amongst dialects. In Brazil, [a] and [ɐ] are in complementary distribution: [ɐ ~ ə] occurs in word-final unstressed syllables, while [ɜ ~ ə] occurs in stressed syllables before an intervocalic /m/, /n/, or /ɲ/.[34] In these phonetic conditions, [ɜ ~ ə] can be nasalized. Unstressed [a ~ ə] occurs in all other environments.
In European Portuguese, the general situation is similar (with [ə] being more prevalent in nearly all unstressed syllables), except that in some regions the two vowels form minimal pairs in some European dialects.[35] In central European Portuguese this contrast occurs in a limited morphological context, namely in verbs conjugation between the first person plural present and past perfect indicative forms of verbs such as pensamos ('we think') and pensámos ('we thought'; spelled ⟨pensamos⟩ in Brazil). Spahr (2013:6) proposes that it is a kind of crasis rather than phonemic distinction of /a/ and /ɐ/. It means that in falamos 'we speak' there is the expected prenasal /a/-raising: [fɐˈlɐmuʃ], while in falámos 'we spoke' there are phonologically two /a/ in crasis: /faˈlaamos/ > [fɐˈlamuʃ].
English loanwords containing stressed /ʌ/ or /ɝ/ are usually associated with pre-nasal ⟨a⟩ as in rush,[36][37] or it's influenced by orthography as in clube (club),[38][39] or both, as in surf/surfe.[40]
Close-mid vowels and open-mid vowels (/e ~ ɛ/ and /o ~ ɔ/) contrast only when they are stressed.[41] In unstressed syllables, they occur in complementary distribution. In Brazilian Portuguese, they are raised to a high or near-high vowel ([i ~ ɪ] and [u ~ ʊ], respectively) after a stressed syllable,[41] or in some accents and in general casual speech, also before it.
European Portuguese possesses a near-close near-back unrounded vowel. It occurs in unstressed syllables such as in pegar [pɯ̽ˈɣaɾ] ('to grip').[5] There is no standard symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet for this sound. The IPA Handbook transcribes it as /ɯ/, but in Portuguese studies /ɨ/ or /ə/ is traditionally used. There are very few minimal pairs for this sound: some examples include pregar [pɾɯ̽ˈɣaɾ] ('to nail') vs. pregar [pɾɛˈɣaɾ] ('to preach'; the latter stemming from earlier preegar < Latin praedicāre),[42] sê [ˈse] ('be!') vs. sé [ˈsɛ] ('see/cathedral') vs. se [sɯ̽] ('if'), and pêlo [ˈpelu] ('hair') vs. pélo [ˈpɛlu] ('I peel off') vs. pelo [pɯ̽lu] ('for the'),[43] after orthographic changes, all these three words are now spelled pelo.
European Portuguese possesses quite a wide range of vowel allophones:
Diphthongs are not considered independent phonemes in Portuguese, but knowing them can help with spelling and pronunciation.
Diphthong | Usual spelling | Example | Meaning | Notes and variants |
---|---|---|---|---|
aj | ai, ái | pai | 'father' | In BP, it may be realized as [a] before a post-alveolar fricative,[44] making baixo realized as /ˈbaʃu/. |
ɐj | ai | plaina | 'jointer' | In Brazil, except Northern dialects. It occurs before nasal consonants and can be nasalised. |
ei | leite | 'milk' | In central and southern Portugal /e/ can be centralised before palatal sounds. | |
ej | ei, êi | rei | 'king' | There are very few minimal pairs for /ej/ and /ɛj/, all of which occur in oxytonic words. In northern Portugal this is the common pronunciation for "ei". In vernacular BP, "ei" may be realized essentially as [e] in some unstressed syllables.[44] |
ɛj | ei, éi | geleia | 'jelly' | In Portugal it only occurs as "éi", in plurals like "anéis". |
oj | oi | dois | 'two' | There are very few minimal pairs for /oj/ and /ɔj/, all of which occur in oxytonic words. |
ɔj | ói | dói, herói | 'hurts', 'hero' | |
uj | ui | fui | 'I went' | Usually stressed. |
aw | au, áu | mau | 'bad' | |
al | sal | 'salt' | Phonemically /al/. It occurs only in BP; in Portugal, it is realized as a sequence [aɫ]. | |
ɐw | au | saudade | 'to miss' | In EP, when unstressed. Also occurs in the contraction ao(s). |
ew | eu, êu | seu | 'his' | There are very few minimal pairs for /eu/ and /ɛu/, all occurring in oxytonic words. |
ɛw | éu | céu | 'sky' | |
el | mel | 'honey' | Phonemically /ɛl/. It occurs only in BP; in Portugal, it is realized as a sequence [ɛɫ]. | |
iw | iu | viu | 'he saw' | Usually stressed. |
il | mil | 'thousand' | Phonemically /il/. It occurs only in BP; in Portugal, it is realized as a sequence [iɫ]. | |
ow | ou | ouro | 'gold' | Merges with /o/ in several contexts,[44] particularly in the dialects of central and southern Portugal[45] and in vernacular Brazilian Portuguese. |
ol | polvo | 'octopus' | Phonemically /ol/. It occurs only in BP; in Portugal, it is realized as a sequence [oɫ]. | |
ɔw | sol | 'sun' | Phonemically /ɔl/. It occurs only in BP; in Portugal, it is realized as a sequence [ɔɫ]. | |
uw | ul | sul | 'south' | Phonemically /ul/. It occurs only in BP; in Portugal, it is realized as a sequence [uɫ]. |
wa | ua | quase | 'almost' | As the cases above, this and following cases are considered hiatus (unless they follow q or g) but pronounced as diphthongs. |
wɐ | ua | qualidade | 'quality' | EP pronunciation when unstressed. |
wɛ | ue | sequela | 'sequela' | |
we | ue | lingueta | 'latch' | |
wi | ui, uí | linguiça | 'sausage' | |
wo | uo | aquoso | 'aqueous' | |
wɔ | uo | aquosa | 'aqueous' | |
wu | uo | iníquo | 'iniquitous' |
There are also some words with two vowels occurring next to each other like in iate and sábio may be pronounced both as rising diphthongs or hiatus.[46][47]
[j] and [w] are non-syllabic counterparts of the vowels /i/ and /u/, respectively. At least in European Portuguese, the diphthongs [ɛj, aj, ɐj, ɔj, oj, uj, iw, ew, ɛw, aw] tend to have more central second elements [i̠̯, u̟̯] - note that the latter semivowel is also more weakly rounded than the vowel /u/. In the Lisbon accent, the diphthong [ɐj] often has an onset that is more back than central, i.e. [ɐ̠j] or even [ʌj].[17]
Triphthong | Usual spelling | Example | Meaning | Notes and variants |
---|---|---|---|---|
waj | uai | Paraguai | 'Paraguay' | |
wej | uei | averiguei | 'I verified' | Realized as [wɐj] in central Portugal. |
waw | ual | qual | 'which' | Phonemically /wal/. It occurs in BP; in Portugal, it is realized as a sequence [waɫ]. |
wiw | uiu | delinquiu | '(he/she) transgressed' | |
wow | uou | enxaguou | '(he/she) rinsed' |
Portuguese also has a series of nasalized vowels. Cruz-Ferreira (1995) analyzes European Portuguese with five monophthongs and four diphthongs, all phonemic: /ĩ ẽ ɐ̃ õ ũ ɐ̃ĩ̯ õĩ̯ ũĩ̯ ɐ̃ũ̯/. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the end of words (or followed by a final sibilant), and in a few compounds. Brazilian Portuguese is overall more nasal[clarification needed] than European Portuguese due to many external influences including the common language spoken at Brazil's coast at time of discovery, Tupi.[citation needed]
As in French, the nasal consonants represented by the letters ⟨m n⟩ are deleted in coda position, and in that case the preceding vowel becomes phonemically nasal, e.g. in genro /ˈʒẽ.ʁu/ ('son-in-law'). But a nasal consonant subsists when it is followed by a plosive, e.g. in cantar [kɜ̃nˈtaɾ ~ kɜnˈtaɾ] ('to sing').[48] Vowel nasalization has also been observed non-phonemically as result of coarticulation, before heterosyllabic nasal consonants, e.g. in soma [ˈsõ.mɐ] ('sum').[49] Hence, one speaks discriminatingly of nasal vowels (i.e. phonemically so) and nasalized vowels. Additionally, a nasal monophthong /ɜ̃/ written ⟨ã⟩ exists independently of these processes, e.g. in romã /ʀoˈmɜ̃/ ('pomegranade').
The /e-ɛ/ and /o-ɔ/ distinction does not happen in nasal vowels; ⟨em om⟩ are pronounced as close-mid. In BP, the vowel /a/ (which the letter ⟨a⟩ otherwise represents) is phonemically raised to [ɜ] when it is nasal, and also in stressed syllables before heterosyllabic nasal consonants (even if the speaker does not nasalize vowels in this position)[50]: compare for instance dama sã [ˈdɜ̃.ma ˈsɜ̃] ('healthy lady') and dá maçã [ˈda maˈsɜ̃] ('it gives apples'). /a/ may also be raised slightly in word-final unstressed syllables.
Nasalization and height increase noticeably with time during the production of a single nasal vowel in BP in those cases that are written with nasal consonants ⟨m n⟩, so that /ˈʒẽ.ʁu/ may be realized as [ˈʒẽj̃.ʁu] or [ˈʒẽɰ̃.ʁu].[51] This creates a significant difference between the realizations of ⟨am⟩ and ⟨ã⟩ for some speakers: compare for instance ranço real [ˈʁɜ̃ɰ̃.su ʁeˈaw] ('royal rancidness') and rã surreal [ˈʁɜ̃ su.ʁeˈaw] ('surreal frog'). (Here [ɰ̃] means a velar nasal approximant.) At the end of a word ⟨em⟩ is always pronounced [ẽj̃] with a clear nasal palatal approximant (see below). Whenever a nasal vowel is pronounced with a nasal coda (approximant or occlusive) the (phonetic) nasalization of the vowel itself is optional.[52]
The following examples exhaustively demonstrate the general situation for BP.
It follows from these observations that the vowels of BP can be described simply in the following way.
With this description, the examples from before are simply /ʀoˈmɜ/, /ˈʒeN.ʀu/, /sej̃/, /kaNˈtaɾ/, /ˈkɜ.nu/, /ˈtomu/. But there is no commonly accepted transcription for Brazilian Portuguese phonology. The reader is advised to look in the sources of examples if they wish to know precisely what is meant by phoneme symbols.
Most times nasal diphthongs occur at the end of the word. They are:
[j̃] and [w̃] are nasalized, non-syllabic counterparts of the vowels /i/ and /u/, respectively. At least in European Portuguese, the diphthongs [ɐ̃j̃, õj̃, ũj̃, ɐ̃w̃] tend to have more central second elements [ĩ̠̯, ũ̟̯] - note that the latter semivowel is also more weakly rounded than the vowel /u/.[17]
The stressed relatively open vowels /a, ɛ, ɔ/ contrast with the stressed relatively close vowels /ɐ, e, o/ in several kinds of grammatically meaningful alternation:
There are also pairs of unrelated words that differ in the height of these vowels, such as besta /e/ ('beast') and besta /ɛ/ ('crossbow'); mexo /e/ ('I move') and mecho /ɛ/ ('I highlight [hair]'); molho /o/ ('sauce') and molho /ɔ/ ('bunch'); corte /ɔ/ ('cut') and corte /o/ ('court'); meta /e/ ('I put' subjunctive) and meta /ɛ/ ('goal'); and (especially in Portugal) para /ɐ/ ('for') and para /a/ ('he stops'). Since most polysyllabic homographs of this sort can be distinguished from context, the orthography does not differentiate them, with the exception of, optionally, fôrma ('mold') and forma /ɔ/ ('shape').
There are several minimal pairs in which a clitic containing the vowel /ɐ/ contrasts with a monosyllabic stressed word containing /a/: da vs. dá, mas vs. más, a vs. à /a/, etc. In BP, however, these words may be pronounced with /a/ in some environments.
Some isolated vowels (meaning those that are neither nasal nor part of a diphthong) tend to change quality in a fairly predictable way when they become unstressed. In the examples below, the stressed syllable of each word is in boldface. The term "final" should be interpreted here as at the end of a word or before word-final -s.
Spelling | Stressed | Unstressed but not final | Unstressed and final | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pronunciation | Examples | Pronunciation | Examples | Pronunciation | Examples | |
a | /a/ or /ɐ/ | parto /a/
pensamos /ɐ/ |
/a ~ ɐ/ (BP) | partir * | [ɐ ~ ə] (BP) | pensa * |
/ɐ/ [ə] (EP) | /ɐ/ [ə] (EP) | |||||
e | /e/ or /ɛ/ | pega /ɛ/
mover /e/ |
/e ~ ɛ/ (BP) | pegar * | /ɪ ~ i/ (BP) | move * |
/ɨ/ (EP) | /ɨ/ (EP) | |||||
o | /o/ or /ɔ/ | bola /ɔ/
pôde /o/ |
/o ~ ɔ/ (BP) | poder * | /ʊ ~ u/ (BP) | pato * |
/u/ (EP) | /u/ (EP) |
* N.E.: The bold syllable is the stressed, but the pronunciation indicated on the left is for the unstressed syllable - not bold.
With a few exceptions mentioned in the previous sections, the vowels /a/ and /ɐ/ occur in complementary distribution when stressed, the latter before nasal consonants followed by a vowel, and the former elsewhere.
In Brazilian Portuguese, the general pattern in the southern and western accents is that the stressed vowels /a, ɐ/, /e, ɛ/, /o, ɔ/ neutralize to /a/, /e/, /o/, respectively, in unstressed syllables, as is common in Romance languages. In final unstressed syllables, however, they are raised to /ɐ/, /i/, /u/. In casual BP (as well in the fluminense dialect), /e, ɛ/, /o, ɔ/ may be raised to /ɪ ~ i/, /ʊ ~ u/ on any unstressed syllable,[55] as long as it has no coda.
European Portuguese has taken this process one step further, raising /a, ɐ/, /e, ɛ/, /o, ɔ/ to /ɐ/, /ɨ/, /u/ in all unstressed syllables. The vowels /ɐ/ and /ɨ/ are also more centralized than their Brazilian counterparts. The three unstressed vowels /ɐ, ɨ, u/ are reduced and often voiceless or elided in fast speech. If /ɨ/ is elided, which mostly it is in the beginning of a word and word finally, the previous consonant becomes aspirated like in 'ponte' (bridge) [ˈpõtʰ], or if it is /u/ is labializes the previous consonant like in 'grosso' (thick) [ˈgɾosʷ].
There are some exceptions to the rules above. For example, /i/ occurs instead of unstressed /e/ or /ɨ/, word-initially or before another vowel in hiatus (teatro, reúne, peão). Also, /a/, /ɛ/ or /ɔ/ appear in some unstressed syllables in EP, being marked on the lexicon, like espetáculo [ʃpɛˈtakulu]. And there is some dialectal variation in the unstressed sounds: the northern and eastern accents of BP have low vowels in unstressed syllables, /ɛ, ɔ/, instead of the high vowels /e, o/. However, the Brazilian media tends to prefer the southern pronunciation. In any event, the general paradigm is a useful guide for pronunciation and spelling.
Nasal vowels, vowels that belong to falling diphthongs, and the high vowels /i/ and /u/ are not affected by this process, nor is the vowel /o/ when written as the digraph ⟨ou⟩. Nevertheless, casual BP may raise unstressed nasal vowels /ẽ/, /õ/ to [ɪ̃ ~ ĩ], [ʊ̃ ~ ũ], too.
In BP, an epenthetic vowel [i] is sometimes inserted between consonants, to break up consonant clusters that are not native to Portuguese, in learned words and in borrowings.[56][57] This also happens at the ends of words after consonants that cannot occur word-finally (e.g., /d/, /k/, /f/). For example, psicologia ('psychology') may be pronounced [pisikoloˈʒiɐ]; adverso ('adverse') may be pronounced [adʒiˈvɛχsu]; McDonald's may be pronounced [mɛ̞kiˈdõnɐ̞wdʒis]. In northern Portugal, an epenthetic [ɨ] may be used instead, [pɨsikuluˈʒiɐ], [ɐðɨˈβɛɾsu], but in southern Portugal there is often no epenthesis, [psikuluˈʒiɐ], [ɐdˈvɛɾsu]. Epenthesis at the end of a word does not normally occur in Portugal.
The native Portuguese consonant clusters, where there is not epenthesis, are sequences of a non-sibilant oral consonant followed by the liquids /ɾ/ or /l/,[56] and the complex consonants /ks, kw, ɡw/.[57] Some examples:
When two words belonging to the same phrase are pronounced together, or two morphemes are joined in a word, the last sound in the first may be affected by the first sound of the next (sandhi), either coalescing with it, or becoming shorter (a semivowel), or being deleted. This affects especially the sibilant consonants /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, and the unstressed final vowels /ɐ/, /i, ɨ/, /u/.
As was mentioned above, the dialects of Portuguese can be divided into two groups, according to whether syllable-final sibilants are pronounced as postalveolar consonants /ʃ/, /ʒ/ or as alveolar /s/, /z/. At the end of words, the default pronunciation for a sibilant is voiceless, /ʃ, s/, but in connected speech the sibilant is treated as though it were within a word (assimilation):
When two identical sibilants appear in sequence within a word, they reduce to a single consonant. For example, nascer, desço, excesso, exsudar are pronounced with [s] by speakers who use alveolar sibilants at the end of syllables, and disjuntor is pronounced with [ʒ] by speakers who use postalveolars. But if the two sibilants are different they may be pronounced separately, depending on the dialect. Thus, the former speakers will pronounce the last example with [zʒ], whereas the latter speakers will pronounce the first examples with [s] if they are from Brazil or [ʃs] if from Portugal (although in relaxed pronunciation the first sibilant in each pair may be dropped). This applies also to words that are pronounced together in connected speech:
Normally, only the three vowels /ɐ/, /i/ (in BP) or /ɨ/ (in EP), and /u/ occur in unstressed final position. If the next word begins with a similar vowel, they merge with it in connected speech, producing a single vowel, possibly long (crasis). Here, "similar" means that nasalization can be disregarded, and that the two central vowels /a, ɐ/ can be identified with each other. Thus,
If the next word begins with a dissimilar vowel, then /i/ and /u/ become approximants in Brazilian Portuguese (synaeresis):
In careful speech and in with certain function words, or in some phrase stress conditions (see Mateus and d'Andrade, for details), European Portuguese has a similar process:
But in other prosodic conditions, and in relaxed pronunciation, EP simply drops final unstressed /ɨ/ and /u/ (elision):
Unlike French, for example, Portuguese does not indicate most of these sound changes explicitly in its orthography.
Primary stress may fall on any of the three final syllables of a word, but mostly on the last two. There is a partial correlation between the position of the stress and the final vowel; for example, the final syllable is usually stressed when it contains a nasal phoneme, a diphthong, or a close vowel. The orthography of Portuguese takes advantage of this correlation to minimize the number of diacritics.
Because of the phonetic changes that often affect unstressed vowels, pure lexical stress is less common in Portuguese than in related languages, but there is still a significant number of examples of it:
Tone is not lexically significant in Portuguese, but phrase- and sentence-level tones are important. As in most Romance languages, interrogation on yes-no questions is expressed mainly by sharply raising the tone at the end of the sentence. Exception is the word 'oi' that is subject to meaning changes: in exclamation tone 'oi' means 'hi/hello', in interrogative tone 'oi' means 'I didn't understand'.