[texhax] special hyphenation

[Natércia Fernandes]

Hi all,

I would like to known if there is a way to "protect" the symbol hiphen in 
words that have it themselves. That is:

In portuguese words having a hiphen are very common.
When I write a LaTeX document in portuguese I type things like
viram-nas
empenharam-se.

There are 2 different problems when these words have to be broken over two 
lines (hyphenated):
1. LaTeX always breaks them in the "-" they have, even if the result would be 
very different if such symbol was absent.

2. In portuguese the hyphenation is possible also at the place where the "-" 
is, but in this case the next line should begin with another hyphen (rule 
that LaTeX doesn't follow if I type the words simply as above).
For example, the word "empenharam-se" can be hyphenated according to 
portuguese rules like this:

em-                                        1st line
penharam-se                          2nd line

or

empe-
nharam-se

or
empenha-
ram-se

or (and the problem is here)
empenharam-
-se                                        (note the hyphen at the beginning 
of this second line)


How can I tell LaTeX that:
1. the "-" is nost employed in the sense of "hyphenate here"?
2. if it hyphenates at a "-" then it should insert another "-" at the 
beginning of the second line?

Until now I've looked at the final document and solved these situations 
mannually, but this is not a solution considering the high frequency of words 
with such characteristics in a text.

Thanks,
Natércia