This page explains how nouns and articles work in Brazilian Portuguese, including grammatical gender and how to use definite and indefinite articles.
Nouns in Brazilian Portuguese
Nouns are words that represent people, places, or things.
In Brazilian Portuguese, all nouns have a grammatical gender – masculine or feminine.
If a noun ends with an –o, it is generally masculine and if it ends with an –a, it is generally feminine:
However, not all nouns end in an -o or an -a in Brazilian Portuguese. Words ending in im, om, um, ama or ema are generally masculine (e.g. problema / problem) and words that end in gem, ade, ice and ez are generally feminine (e.g. garagem / garage). Words ending in ção, which usually translate to words ending in “tion” in English are also generally feminine (e.g. educação / education).
The plural of nouns is generally formed by by adding s to those ending in a vowel (e.g. menino meninos) and es to those ending in a consonant (e.g. professor professores).
Articles in Brazilian Portuguese
The appropriate article accompanies a noun according to its gender o for masculine nouns, and a for feminine nouns. The definite article is placed before a noun to indicate that the identity of the noun is known to the listener/reader, this is the equivalent of the in English.
Brazilians use articles in front of nouns much more frequently than people do in English. Definite articles are used when referring to a person’s name e.g. o Roberto and to a country e.g. o Brasil:
If a noun is plural, use os for masucline nouns and as for feminine nouns.
| os meninos | the boys |
| as meninas | the girls |
Definite articles are summarised in the table below:
| Masculine | Feminine | |
| Singular | o | a |
| Plural | os | as |
Indefinite articles
The indefinite article is used before a noun when its identity is not known to the listener/reader.
Portuguese indefinite articles correspond to the English forms “a”, “an”, and “some”,
Place um before singular masculine nouns and uma before singular feminine nouns. If a noun is plural, place uns before masucline nouns and umas before feminine nouns.
| Masculine | Feminine | |
| Singular (a/an) | um | uma |
| Plural (some) | uns | umas |
I’ve included some examples in the table below: