The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Portuguese pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. Distinction is noted between the two major standards—that of Portugal and of Brazil. Neither 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. See Portuguese phonology for a more thorough look at the sounds of Portuguese.
Apply national variant differences with discretion: when there are differing dialectal Brazilian Portuguese pronunciations thanks to differing patterns of vowel reduction and voiced consonant lenition (that Brazilians indeed have in unstressed syllables), the one closest to the European Portuguese one should generally be preferred, as this guideline is intended to help native speakers of other languages, since the opposing Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation tends to be the more phonetically written one and those in contact with a given Brazilian dialect would immediately get a clue on where vowel reduction is not used despite being optional.
^ abIn northern and central Portugal, /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/ are lenited to fricatives of the same place of articulation ([β], [ð], and [ɣ], respectively) in all places except after a pause, or a nasal vowel, in which contexts they are stops [b, d, ɡ], not dissimilar from English b, d, g (Mateus & d'Andrade 2000:11). Most often, it only happens in southern and insular Portugal and in Brazil in some unstressed syllables, generally in relaxed speech, but this is by no means universal.
^ abIn most varieties of Brazilian Portuguese, /d, t/ are palatalized and affricated to post-alveolar before high front vowels /i, ĩ/.
^/ʎ/ has merged with [j] in some dialects of Brazilian Portuguese, specially the caipira one.
^ abThe rhotic consonant represented as /ʁ/ has considerable variation across different variants, being pronounced as [x], [h], [χ], [ʁ], etc., in Brazil and as [ʁ], [ʀ], [r], etc., in Portugal. See also Guttural R in Portuguese.
^ abcThe 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.
^ abThe realization of syllable-final ‹r› varies amongst dialects; it is generally pronounced as an alveolar tap [ɾ] in European Portuguese and some Brazilian dialects (e.g. Rio Grande do Sul state and São Paulo city), as a coronal approximant ([ɹ] or [ɻ]) in various other Brazilian dialects, 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[fiˈkaɾ aw ˈlɛw]).
^Present in loanwords from English. In some Brazilian dialects, it is also the phonetic realization of /ʁ/.
^ abMost Brazilian dialects has closed <a> for sequences <ai> when it comes before /m/ and /n/. In many dialects it is also nasalized. Many speakers of these dialects, including broadcast media has open <a> for some words like Jaime and Roraima.
^In the dialect of Lisbon, /e/ merges with /ɐ/ when it comes before palatal sounds (e.g. abelha, venho, jeito).
^There is no diphthong before palatal consonant, so hiatuses are not indicated before /ɲ/, and there is no sequences of vowel plus high vowel before /ʎ/ (e.g. rainha/ʁaˈiɲɐ/).
^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[ˈew ˈʁi.u] (I laugh) and ele riu[ˈelɨ ˈʁiw] (he laughed).
^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]
^Intervocalic semivowels are ambisyllabic, they're part of previous falling diphthongs and they're geminated to next syllable onset. Examples of such pronunciations are goiaba[ɡojˈjabɐ] and Cauã for [kawˈwɐ̃].