
The letters r, s, z and the combinations nh, lh, ch, rr may prove more challenging, for example, rádio (radio), cozinhando (cooking), chaves (keys), mulher (woman), and cachorro (dog).Īfter practising the alphabet sounds, we advise language learners to jump right into pronunciations. Additionally, the cedilha (ç) before -a, -o, and -u sounds the same as “s.” The letter h is silent in Portuguese. Nasal vowels are common and represented by the tilde (~) over the vowels a and o, for example, canção (song), and maçã (apple). These accents also indicate the stressed syllable, for example, café (coffee), você (you, formal), and mãe (mother). Accents are used to show their pronunciation: á, â, ã, à, ç, é, ê, í, ó, ô, õ, and ú.

One of the trickier parts of learning the alphabet, however, is knowing what the symbols above each letter do to change the sound you make. The Portuguese alphabet is Latin-based and has 26 letters, the same as the English alphabet.

The Portuguese alphabet is one of the first things language learners attempt to tackle in their quest to learn to speak and write Portuguese. Not only is Portuguese relatively quick to pick up and begin speaking, understanding it gives you a huge advantage in understanding other Romance languages like French, Italian, and Spanish. If we put it all together, we have, “Animals are not allowed in the restaurant.” Take this sentence for example: “Animais não são permitidos no restaurante.” The sentence is made up almost entirely of Portuguese-English cognates.

These cognates can give you a huge advantage when it comes to speaking Portuguese quickly and confidently. Because of these shared origins, you’ll quickly discover that many words sound similar to English and have the same meaning-also called cognates. English and Portuguese also share deep Latin roots. Portuguese grammar and sentence structures are simplified compared to English, and many Portuguese language learners find that the Portuguese accent is easier to produce than a Spanish accent. Speaking Portuguese gives you access to the millions of Lusophones who are fluent in the second most-spoken Romance language in the world.Įnglish speakers will find that learning Portuguese is not as difficult to learn as it sounds. As the ninth most powerful language in the world, Portuguese speakers, also called “Lusophones,” are nicely situated among the likes of other economic heavyweights like German and Japanese (ranking seventh and eighth, respectively). From Portugal to Brazil to Mozambique, learning Portuguese will expand your world more broadly in business and in culture. Learn Portuguese and join the conversation with over 250 million native speakers across the globe. It compares your voice to that of native and non-native speakers, providing instant feedback and helping you improve your ability to speak and understand Portuguese. Pronunciation can be one of the trickier aspects of learning Portuguese for beginners, but don’t worry because Rosetta Stone’s patented speech-recognition engine, called TruAccent, provides crucial feedback.

The language is spoken by virtually all of the 200 million inhabitants of Brazil and spoken widely across the Brazilian diaspora, today consisting of about two million Brazilians who have emigrated to other countries. Rosetta Stone focuses on teaching Brazilian Portuguese (Português do Brasil). As the result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of Portuguese and Portuguese-creole speakers are also found in India, Sri Lanka, some Indonesian islands, parts of Malaysia, and in areas of the Caribbean. It is an official language of Portugal, of course, and also Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, and Macau (China).
