Thursday, March 31, 2022

Portuguese Stress Rules

Portuguese words which do not have accent marks are stressed on the final syllable or on the penultimate. The acute accent is used for open vowels, and the circumflex is used for closed vowels. Words ending with the consonants r, l and z are stressed on the final syllable, and words ending in i and u are stressed on the final syllable. Other words are stressed on the penultimate syllable. For words which do not follow these rules, stress is indicated with an accent mark.

The following Portuguese words have accent marks:

águia (eagle)
avó (grandmother)
avô (grandfather)
baía (bay)
bebê (baby)
café (coffee)
exército (army)
máquina (machine)
táxi (taxi)
útil (useful)

Portuguese stress rules are similar to those of Spanish. However, Spanish lacks the closed vowels of Portuguese and does not use the circumflex. Another difference is that all Spanish words with a word-final vowel usually have penultimate stress, and in Spanish words with a word-final n are normally stressed on the penultimate syllable. The accent marks are used to indicate the stress in a word which does not follow regular stress rules.

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