The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Portuguese and Galician pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. There are two major standards of Portuguese (P)—one of Portugal (EP) and one of Brazil (BP)—plus one of Galician, in Galicia (G). Neither Portuguese variant is preferred over the other at Wikipedia except in cases where a local pronunciation is clearly more relevant, such as a place in Brazil or a Portuguese artist.
↑In Galician and some rural northern accents of European Portuguese, /v/ has merged with the [b~β] set.
12In most varieties of Brazilian Portuguese, /d,t/ are affricated to [dʒ,tʃ] before high front vowels /i,ĩ/.
12345In Galician, nasal and lateral consonants only contrast before vowels. Before consonants, they assimilate to the consonant's place of articulation. In word-final position, only /ŋ/ and /l/ occur.
↑In European Portuguese, syllable-final /l/ is usually velarized[ɫ] much like with 'toll' for many English speakers. For most Brazilians, it has been vocalized to [w] before consonants and at the end of words. In traditional Galician, syllable-final /l/ was also velarized; but nowadays it has been widely replaced by a clear l[l] in most dialects.
↑In some Galician dialects /ʎ/ has merged with /j/. Minor yeísmo-like merger is also present in some dialects of Brazilian Portuguese, specially the caipira one.
12The rhotic consonant represented as /ʁ/ has considerable variation across different variants, being pronounced as [x], [h], [χ], [ʁ], etc., in Brazil; as [ʁ], [ʀ], [r], etc., in Portugal; and as [r] in Galicia. See also Guttural R in Portuguese.
123The rhotic consonants /ɾ/ ‹r› and /ʁ/ ‹rr› only contrast between vowels. Otherwise, they are in complementary distribution as ‹r›, with /ʁ/ occurring word-initially, after ‹l›, ‹n›, and ‹s› and in compounds; /ɾ/ is found elsewhere.
12The realization of syllable-final ‹r› varies amongst dialects; it is generally pronounced as an alveolar tap [ɾ] in European Portuguese, Galician and some Brazilian dialects (e.g. Rio Grande do Sul state and São Paulo city), as either an alveolar approximant [ɹ] or retroflex approximant [ɻ] in various other Brazilian dialects (primarily known for its use in caipira dialect, but also paranaense among sulista dialects, mineiro, sertanejo, and to a minor degree, some spekers of paulistano, capixaba and even fluminense) and as a guttural R in all others (e.g. Rio de Janeiro city, the overwhelmingly majority from the Northeast). Additionally, in some Brazilian Portuguese dialects, word-final ‹r› may be weakened to complete elision in infinitives; e.g. ficar[fiˈka] (note word final ‹r› is pronounced —though as a tap [ɾ]— only if it is followed by a vowel sound in the same phrase or prosodic unit: ficar ao léu[fiˈkaɾawˈlɛw]).
↑In Galician, /x/ may be used in loanwords, foreign names and hispanicized names; like kharxa, Araújo (instead of Araúxo, pron. with [ʃ]) and Fagilde or Fajilde (instead of Faxilde, pron. with [ʃ]).
12345The 5 higher vowels /ɐ,e,i,o,u/, when stressed and followed by a nasal consonant, may assimilate the nasality.
↑In the dialect of Lisbon, /e/ merges with /ɐ/ when it comes before palatal sounds (e.g. abelha, venho, jeito).
↑Some of the post-stressed high vowels in hiatuses, as in frio ('cold') and rio ('river'), may vary between a reduced vowel [ˈfɾi.u] and a glide [ˈfɾiw], exceptions are verbal conjugations, forming pairs like eu rio[ˈewˈʁi.u] (I laugh) and ele riu[ˈelɨˈʁiw] (he laughed).
↑In Portuguese, word final /ɐ̃/ may diphthongize to [ɐ̃w] (note this realization occurs exclusively in verbal forms spelled with final -am: namoram, falam, ruiram).
↑In Portuguese, word final /ẽ/ diphthongizes to [ẽj] (e.g. sem, também, nuvens). In many European Portuguese dialects (especially central and southern varieties) it has become [ɐ̃j]: sem[ˈsɐ̃j]
↑The semivowels/w/ and /j/ can be combined with most vowels to form diphthongs and triphthongs. This includes nasal diphthongs such as [ɐ̃j] and [ɐ̃w], and nasal triphthongs such as [wɐ̃w] and [wõj].
