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Now that Brazil has revised its orthography to conform to Portuguese orthography in 2009, what are the prime differences in orthography between the various regional variants of written Portuguese? The only difference I have noticed are

  1. the stressed open/closed O, as in fenômeno (BR) vs. fenómeno (PT), and

  2. the open/closed E, as in gênero (BR) vs. género (PT).

Are there other differences in Portuguese orthography?

Otavio Macedo
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Earthliŋ
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1 Answers1

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There are still differences, because the revised orthography respects differences in pronunciation between the regional variants.

The orthographic agreement can be summed up in a few categories, of which the last two listed here allow double orthography, or even distinct orthographies.

  1. some types of words have now their first letter in lower case
    Primavera - primavera
    Norte - norte

  2. suppression of voiceless consonants
    acção - ação
    excepto - exceto

When the consonant isn't totally mute, or both versions of the word can be heard, there is double orthography, that is, the agreement doesn't prescribe one way over the other:

espectável + espetável
conceptual + concetual

When the word is pronounced differently, there are different ways of writing it:

adoção (Portugal) and adopção (Brasil)
intercetar (Portugal) and interceptar (Brasil)

Note: Ironically, words that previously were written the same way in both variants, are now written differently in order the respect the phonetic criteria. This change raised a few issues against its acceptance.

  1. suppression of certain accents
    eles lêem - eles leem
    heróico - heroico

Again, when there are differences in the pronunciation, both orthographies coexist, as was referred in the question:

sénior (Portugal) and sênior (Brasil)
sinfónico (Portugal) + sinfônico (Brasil)

But also the conjugation of the first person plural in the past perfect tense of verbs belonging to the first class (ending in -ar):

nós andámos, nós procurámos (Portugal)
(to distinguish from the present tense)

nós andamos, nós procuramos (Brasil)

Sérgio Pereira
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  • I'm finding conflicting information on the internet for adoção and intercetar in Brazil. Are you sure you wrote that part correctly? – Dan Getz Jul 23 '15 at 19:50
  • @DanGetz I used those examples from a reference published with a portuguese newspaper a few years ago. As the orthographic agreement didn't find a consensus across all the portuguese speaking countries, it's pretty tricky to answer this question. Any suggestions for improvement are welcome. – Sérgio Pereira Jul 26 '15 at 21:17