The Roman alphabet is poorly suited for Portuguese. It's missing letters for some consonant sounds (ch lh nh rr), but it has duplicate letters for some other consonant sounds (c/qu g/gu s/c/ss/ç/x ch/x z/s/x j/g). Portuguese has 9 vowels, but the Roman alphabet only has 5 vowel letters, so Portuguese uses diacritics and rules to indicate vowel quality and stress, and 3 different ways to mark nasal vowels. In addition, Portuguese sometimes spells words differently even though they're pronounced alike, to indicate etymology, morphology, or meaning. It's much more complicated than it needs to be.

For example, the Roman alphabet can't distinguish between mid-open and mid-closed vowels: the word selo is pronounced with mid-open ɛ when it means I stamp, but is pronounced with mid-closed e when it means a seal. Likewise, the letter o is pronounced as mid-open ɔ in ovo novo, but as mid-closed o in ovos novos! And why did the orthographic reform of 1990 eliminate the trema from tranqüilo? Because it's pronounced like quilogram?

Portuguese also has quite a bit of dialectal variation both between Portugal, Brazil, and the 8 other Lusophone countries (not even counting Galicia), and also within Brazil and Portugal. The 1990 Orthographic Agreement eliminated some spelling differences and silent letters, and accepted that different dialects can spell some words according to their own pronunciation. However, the inexact spelling hides other important differences in pronunciation that make accents recognizable but letters unreliable.

The Musa Alphabet would be a better choice for Portuguese, not just because it has all the letters that Portuguese needs, but because it writes closer to pronunciation. That means that different dialects may spell the "same word" differently, just like they now do with, for example, the word for bus: autocarro in Portugal, ônibus in Brazil, and machimbombo in Angola. That's not a problem - we want everybody to learn to read and write their native language first, before learning to read another language or dialect.

Musa offers some other advantages, like using the same letters to write the same sounds in every language. That makes learning a foreign language much easier. The Musa letters are featural - letters that look alike sound alike - and that makes them easier to learn. The standard Musa keyboard has only 26 keys, so you don't need Shift keys or secondary pages of keys. And the Musa letters are simple geometric shapes, so they're easy to write, and to recognize, even at small font sizes.

Let's take a look at how Musa writes Portuguese!

We'll start by introducing you to all of the Musa letters you'll need for Portuguese, and then we'll explain the difficult ones afterwards.

Consonants

Here are the consonants of Portuguese :

	bomba		dedo		dia		gato guerra
	papel		tanto		tia		casa quatro aqui
	viúva		zero Brasil		jogo gente
	filha		sapo cedo assado açoite		chuva xisto mas paz
	mesmo		nunca		minha
			Lula		filha		Lula
			caro mar prato				rosa carro

D T: In many dialects, d t are affricated to dj ch before i ih.



saudade



mentira

S: Many words and syllables end in the ʃ  sound, often written as an s or z like in pasto or paz. When this sound comes before a voiced consonant like in Lisboa, it becomes voiced, and is written as ʒ . In some dialects, these final sibilants are pronounced s z  .

X: The Roman letter x is usually pronounced as a sibilant, like s or z. But sometimes, it's pronounced like ks or gz, as in fixar or hexágono. In those cases, we write it in Musa with two letters, as in  or .

L: The Portuguese letter l is pronounced in several different ways. In the standard dialect of Portugal, it's always pronounced as velarized (dark) ɫ , both before and after a vowel. In Brazil, it's normally light l  before a vowel, but vocalized to u  after a vowel. In other dialects, after a vowel, it's pronounced light or dark, or even as an r. Write it as you say it!

local		(Portugal)		(Brazil)

R: The Portuguese letter r is also pronounced in several different ways. It's pronounced as a "soft" r  in clusters like arco or praça, between vowels like caro (but not after a nasal vowel), and at the end of words like mar (with exceptions). Everywhere else, it's "hard", including when spelled rr. The hard r can be guttural ʁ , fricative χ , or even a trill ʀ . The final r can also be hard, or an approximant like English ɹ , or even silent. You should write r as you pronounce it - everybody will understand you in writing the way they now do in speech.

Vowels

Portuguese has seven simple vowels, which Musa spells with the following letters, written high (in the upper half of the line) when the vowel is stressed, and low when it's unstressed.

	vida, ítem				tudo, único
	cedo, êxito				movo, ônibus
	cede, época				move, ócio
			gato, água

Reduced Vowels

When the vowels above are unstressed, they often change their sound, becoming reduced (raised, centralized, shortened, and swallowed), especially in Portugal:

e → /ɨ/      pegar
o → /u/      poder
a → /ɐ/      pagar

In fact, in Portugal, these reduced vowels sometimes disappear altogether:



excelente

But there are words like pregar, which means to nail when the e is reduced, and to preach when it isn't.



pregar



pregar

In Brazil, very similar reductions occur, but usually only in the final vowel:

e → /ɪ/     move
o → /ʊ/      pato
a → /ɐ/     pensa

The ɐ vowel is common in unstressed syllables, but it also appears occasionally as a stressed vowel in Portugal, before nasals and palatals m n nh lh -i     , as in ânimo or telha.

Nasal Vowels

	cinta, impor, íntegro, ímpeto				sunto, umbigo
	sento, empenho, ênfase, têmpora		santo, ambiente, ânsia, âmbito, maçã		sondo, com, ôntico, cômputos, põem

Diphthongs

The vowels above combine with semivowel offglides  i and  u to form diphthongs:

	fui		viu
	dois		ouro
	rei		seu, nêutron
	geleia, anéis		céu
	herói
	plaina		trauma
	pai		mau
	muito
	põe		bom
	bem, além
	mãe, cãibra		falam, mão

Hiatus

In Musa, we don't allow two consecutive vowels: you have to spell out the transition between them. Unless the first vowel is a diphthong, that transition will be a very short pause called hiatus, which we write in Musa with a letter called the break . So for example in a word like iate, you have to use a break between the i and the a to show that they're in two different syllables: .

Samples



Mudam-se os tempos, mudam-se as vontades.

   

Não sou um ateu total, todos os dias tento encontrar um sinal de Deus, mas infelizmente não o encontro.