Almost all applications support Portuguese accents. Guidelines for typing and using accents are given below. If you need to refer to additional characters, look under the Accents section.
Thanks to Ingrid Truemper for her technical assistance.
Due to early colonialization from Portugal, forms of Portuguese can be found in South America (Brazil), Africa (Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, etc) and the South Pacific (East Timor).
Over the centuries, some of the Portuguese forms have diverged quite a bit, especially in Brazil versus Portugal (or European/Continental Portugues). The differences in spelling and grammar are significant enough that some translaters recommend separate documents for a Brazilian market versus a Portuguese market.
Note: Speakers in the U.S. learning Portuguese typically Brazilian Portuguese, which is now considered the prestige standard.
References
Galician is a language closely related to Portuguese, but spoken within the Galicia province of Spain. Information about Galician is located on the Spanish page.
In Windows, combinations of the ALT key plus a numeric code can be used to type a non-English character (accented letter or punctuation symbol) in any Windows application. More detailed instructions about typing accents with ALT keys are available. Additional options for entering accents in Windows are also listed in the Accents section of this Web site.
| Vwl | Entity Code |
|---|---|
| À | ALT+0192 |
| Á | ALT+0193 |
| Â | ALT+0194 |
| Ã | ALT+0195 |
| É | ALT+0201 |
| Ê | ALT+0202 |
| Í | ALT+0205 |
| Ó | ALT+0211 |
| Ô | ALT+0212 |
| Õ | ALT+0213 |
| Ú | ALT+0218 |
| Ü | ALT+0220 |
| Vwl | Entity Code |
|---|---|
| à | ALT+0224 |
| á | ALT+0225 |
| â | ALT+0226 |
| ã | ALT+0227 |
| é | ALT+0233 |
| ê | ALT+0234 |
| í | ALT+0237 |
| ó | ALT+0243 |
| ô | ALT+0244 |
| õ | ALT+0245 |
| ú | ALT+0250 |
| ü | ALT+0252 |
| Vwl | Entity Code |
|---|---|
| Ç | ALT+0199 (caps) |
| ç | ALT+0231 (lower) |
| º | ALT+0186 (Masculine Ordinal) |
| ª | ALT+0170 (Feminine Ordinal) |
| « | ALT+0171 (Left Angle Quote) |
| » | ALT+0187 (Right Angle Quote) |
| € | ALT+0128 |
In order to use these codes you must activate the international keyboard. Instructions are listed in the Keyboards section of this Web site.
This list is organized by Accent type. For the Template, the symbol "V" means type any vowel.
Windows International Keyboard Codes for Portuguese ACCENT SAMPLE TEMPLATE NOTES Acute á Á ', V ' = apostrophe key Circumflex â Â SHIFT+^, V Grave à À `, V ` = left single quote Tilde ã Ã SHIFT+~,V Umlaut ë Ë ", V " = quote key Example 1: To type lower case ó - Type the apostrophe key ('), then O. For capital Ó, type the apostrophe, then capital O.
For these codes, you must make sure you use the Alt key on the right side of the keyboard.
Codes for Consonants/Punctuation Sym Code Ç Shift+RightAlt + < ç RightAlt + < « RightAlt+[ » RightAlt+] € Control+RightAlt+5
If you wish to simiulate a Portuguese keyboard, follow the instructions for Activating Keyboard Locales to activate and switch Microsoft keyboards.
For the Template, the symbol "V" means type any vowel. The
format is to hold the first two keys down simultaneously, release, then
type the vowel you wish to be accented.
Macintosh Option Codes for Portuguese ACCENT SAMPLE TEMPLATE Acute á Á Option+E, V Circumflex â Â Option+I, V Grave à À Option+`, V Tilde ã Ã Option+N, V Umlaut ë Ë Option+U, V
Example 1: To input the lower case ó, hold down the Option
key, then the E key. Release both keys then type lowercase o.
Example 2: To input the capital Ó, hold down the
Option key, then the E key. Release all three keys then
type capital O.
Sym Code ç Option+C Ç Shift+Option+C º Option+0 ª Option+9 « Option+\ » Shift+Option+\ € Shift+Option+2
(not on older fonts)
These are the codes which allow browsers and screen readers to process data as the appropriate language. All letters in codes are lower case.
See Using Encoding and Language Codes for more information on implementing these codes.
Note: The differences in grammar are significant enough that many translators recommend separate documents for a Brazilian market versus a Portuguese market, so it is beneficial to indicate the country code when using Portuguese.
Use these codes to input accented letters in HTML. For instance, if you want to type São you would type São.
The numbers in parentheses are the numeric codes assigned in Unicode encoding. For instance, because ã is number 227, São can also be used to input São. These numbers are also used with the Windows Alt codes listed above.
| Vwl | ALT Code |
|---|---|
| À | À (192) |
| Á | Á (193) |
| Â | Â (194) |
| Ã | Ã (195) |
| É | É (201) |
| Ê | Ê (202) |
| Í | Í (205) |
| Ó | Ó (211) |
| Ô | Ô (212) |
| Õ | Õ (213) |
| Ú | Ú (218) |
| Ü | Ü (220) |
| Vwl | ALT Code |
|---|---|
| à | à (224) |
| á | á (225) |
| â | â (226) |
| ã | ã (227) |
| é | é (233) |
| ê | ê (234) |
| í | í (237) |
| ó | ó (243) |
| ô | ô (244) |
| õ | õ (245) |
| ú | ú (250) |
| ü | ü (252) |
| Sym | ALT Code | Ç | Ç (199) |
|---|---|
| ç | ç (231) |
| º | º (186) |
| ª | ª (170) |
| « | « (171) |
| » | » (187) | ‹ | ‹ |
| › | › |
| € | € |
Note: Older browsers may not the suport single angle codes (‹ / › for ‹ and ›).
Computers process text by assuming a certain encoding or a system of matching electronic data with visual text characters. Whenever you develop a Web site you need to make sure the proper encoding is specified in the header tags; otherwise the browser may default to U.S. settings and not display the text properly.
To declare an encoding, insert or inspect the following meta-tag at the top of your HTML file, then replace "???" with one of the encoding codes listed above. If you are not sure, use utf-8 as the encoding.
Generic Encoding Template
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=??? ">
...
<head>Declare Unicode
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8 ">
...
<head>
The final close slash must be included after the final quote mark in the encoding header tag if you are using XHTML
Declare Unicode in XHTML
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
...
<head>
If no encoding is declared, then the browser uses the default setting, which in the U.S. is typically Latin-1. In that case many Unicode characters could be displayed incorrectly. Also, older browsers such as Netscape 4.7 may not be able to process the entity codes correctly without the "utf-8" declaration.
Language tags are also suggested so that search engines and screen readers parse the language of a page. These are metadata tags which indicate the language of a page, not devices to trigger translation. Visit the Language Tag page to view information on where to insert it.
Speakers in the U.S. learning Portuguese typically learn forms spoken in Brazil, which is now considered a prestige standard. Brazillian Portuguese is contrasted with European or Continental Portuguese spoken in Portugal. The differences in grammar are significant enough that many translators recommend separate documents for a Brazilian market versus a Portuguese market, so it is beneficial to indicate the country code when using Portuguese.
References
Most content in Portuguese.
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contact Elizabeth J. Pyatt (ejp10@psu.edu).
Unicode character names and hexadecimal entity codes are taken from the public Unicode Character Charts.