Acentuais

Acentuais is a term used to refer to diacritical marks placed above or below letters to indicate pronunciation, stress, or meaning. In the Portuguese-speaking world, the word is often used to describe the set of orthographic accents that modify vowels and, in some cases, consonants. The main acentos frequently described as acentuais are the acute, grave, and circumflex, as well as the til for nasalization. A related diacritic in Portuguese is the cedilha, found under the letter c.

Acento agudo, written as a rising stroke above a vowel (á, é, í, ó, ú), typically marks stressed syllables and can influence pronunciation. Acento grave, shown as a leftward-sloping stroke (à, è, ù), is used in some words to indicate specific historical pronunciations or to distinguish homographs. Acento circunflexo (â, ê, ô) often signals a closed vowel quality and, in certain words, influences stress. O til (ã, õ, and nasalized vowels such as ãe) denotes nasalization. The cedilha (ç) is a related diacritic that changes the pronunciation of c before a, o, u to an s-sound.

In Portuguese orthography, diacritics help indicate the stressed syllable, distinguish otherwise identical words, and guide correct pronunciation. They are essential for literacy, pronunciation, and dictionary lookup, and they interact with rules of word formation and accentuation (paroxítonas, proparoxítonas, etc.).

Beyond Portuguese, many languages employ acentuais with similar purposes: they mark stress, vowel quality, or phonemic distinctions. In digital text, proper encoding (Unicode) is important to preserve these marks, which can affect search, sorting, and readability.