Syllable Counter (Portuguese)

Counting syllables by hand is quick for two words and tedious by the fifth. Anyone closing a haiku at five-seven-five, measuring a redondilha line or checking a child's Portuguese homework ends up counting three times and getting three different answers. Type the word here and the number updates as you type, with no button to press.

The method is worth knowing because the limits follow from it: the counter counts vowel groups. Any run of adjacent vowels counts as a single syllable. That handles diphthongs correctly (pai gives 1, queijo gives 2) and handles accented hiatus, since the accent breaks the run (sa-ú-de gives 3). What it misses is unaccented hiatus: poesia returns 2 instead of 4 and voo returns 1 instead of 2. Hence the approximate label.

Check words with adjacent unaccented vowels yourself: poesia, voo, saara, ideia, caatinga. The letter a with a grave accent is missing from the vowel list, so àquela counts 2 instead of 3. The field accepts a whole sentence and adds up every word, but poetic scansion is a different count: verse uses elision and stops at the last stressed syllable. It all runs in your browser.