I can say any letter of the Portuguese alphabet by its Portuguese name, write down a word spelled out to me, and read an unstressed vowel the way it's said in Portugal, not as a full vowel.
A letter's name is not its sound
26 letters and why their names matter
The Portuguese alphabet has 26 letters. Three of them — k, w, y — appear only in words borrowed from other languages, but you need them: without them you can't spell out an e-mail address or write down a last name.
Letter names are for spelling aloud, not for reading. In Portugal people often ask you to spell your last name or a street name: “Como se escreve?” (“How do you spell it?”). You answer letter by letter, and for a doubled letter you say so: “Com dois erres” (“with two r's”). The letter ç is called “cê de cedilha”. Use the Portuguese names, not the English ones: English E sounds like Portuguese i, and English A like Portuguese ê.
Symbols in an e-mail address: @ — arroba, . — ponto, - — hífen, _ — traço inferior.
No Portuguese keyboard? You can leave out the tilde (ã, õ), the cedilla (ç), and the accent marks (á, à, â, é, ê, í, ó, ô, ú): the answer still counts. The answer key shows the right spelling with the mark: learn that one.
Nouns are learned with their article, o or a. Why it's there and how to choose it comes in module 2; for now, the article is simply part of the word.
Lesson notes
26 letters and why their names matter
The Portuguese alphabet has 26 letters. Three of them — k, w, y — appear only in words borrowed from other languages, but you need them: without them you can't spell out an e-mail address or write down a last name.
Letter names are for spelling aloud, not for reading. In Portugal people often ask you to spell your last name or a street name: “Como se escreve?” (“How do you spell it?”). You answer letter by letter, and for a doubled letter you say so: “Com dois erres” (“with two r's”). The letter ç is called “cê de cedilha”. Use the Portuguese names, not the English ones: English E sounds like Portuguese i, and English A like Portuguese ê.
Symbols in an e-mail address: @ — arroba, . — ponto, - — hífen, _ — traço inferior.
No Portuguese keyboard? You can leave out the tilde (ã, õ), the cedilla (ç), and the accent marks (á, à, â, é, ê, í, ó, ô, ú): the answer still counts. The answer key shows the right spelling with the mark: learn that one.
Nouns are learned with their article, o or a. Why it's there and how to choose it comes in module 2; for now, the article is simply part of the word.
Unstressed vowels: reduced, not full
Unstressed vowels in Portuguese weaken: o sounds like oo in “food” (o livro, o menino), e almost disappears (o nome, o telefone), and a is a short, dull “uh”, like a in “sofa” (a porta, a letra).
English reduces unstressed vowels too, so the a of a porta comes naturally. The trap is o and e: never read them full, as in Spanish. Reduction comes back in every module.
The accent mark is a clue. ´ (acute accent): stress here, open vowel; ^ (circumflex): stress here, closed vowel; ~ (tilde): nasal vowel, lesson 2. The grave accent, as in à, marks the preposition a joined with the article a: an open [a], not the short [ɐ] (module 4).
No mark? Then the stress is usually on the second-to-last syllable: a MEsa, a PORta, o meNIno. Stress on the third-to-last syllable always has a mark: a MÚsica, a SÍlaba. The rules for when a mark is required come at A2; for now, learn the stress with the word.
Common mistakes:
• NOT “meh-NEE-noh” — the final o is “oo”, and the unstressed e almost disappears: o menino.
• NOT “teh-leh-FOH-neh” or “TEL-uh-fohn” — in o telefone the stress is on fo, and all three e's are barely heard.
• NOT “moo-ZEE-kah” — in a música the stress is where the mark is: on the first syllable.
• NOT “POR-tah” with a full “ah” at the end — the final a is short and dull.