Hey There, Portuguese Learner! 👋 Have you ever felt confused about how to pronounce Portuguese words properly? 🤔 You've learned pronunciation rules, you know how to count syllables, but then—boom—someone throws these fancy terminology terms like "graves," "agudas," and "esdrúxulas"? at you and suddenly everything feels complicated again? Here's the good news: these three words are NOT complicated. They're simply fancy names for three stress patterns that Carla from "Portuguese With Carla" explains brilliantly in a video about reading and pronouncing European Portuguese like a native. In this post, I'm going to connect the dots between what Carla teaches about pronunciation rules and what your Portuguese course calls word classifications. By the end, you'll realise they're describing the exact same thing - just using different language. Ready? Let's do this! 💪 ============================================================== The Three Personalities of Portuguese Words 🎭 Think of Portuguese words like having three different personalities. Each one has its own vibe, its own way of showing up, and its own way of making itself heard. Let me introduce them to you - starting with the one that Carla teaches FIRST because it's the most important: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 🏔️ The Grave – "I'm the DEFAULT one!" Palavras graves] are the balanced, moderate majority of Portuguese words. They take the emphasis on the second-to-last syllable (the penultimate one). They're the default, the standard, the "everything's under control" personality. This is where Carla STARTS in her video, and for good reason. She says: "The second to last syllable the penultimate one always takes the emphasis always unless there's specific letters at the end of the word." Translation: Graves are your baseline. When you don't see anything unusual, you default to this pattern. Words like cinema] (CI-ne-ma), livro] (LI-vro), economia] (e-co-NO-mi-a), banco] (BAN-co), and Maria] (Ma-RI-a) are all graves. Most Portuguese words fall into this category because this is the natural, default stress pattern.