Conquer Portuguese numbers and learn to count in Portuguese 💪

So, you're thinking about learning Portuguese?

Well, learning Portuguese numbers is "one" way to get started.

(That was terrible, I know.)

Anyway, let's get into it:

Portuguese numbers 0-10

You're here for the numbers, so I won't belabor you with a wall of text. We'll talk about some of the finer details of Portuguese numbers later on in the blog post.

For now, here's 1 through 10 in Portuguese.

† In Portuguese, the numbers one and two have masculine (um/dois) and feminine (uma/duas) forms. Use the masculine number with masculine nouns and the feminine one with feminine nouns. If you're new to the concept of grammatical gender, see the dropdown appendix in the section "Portuguese numbers bigger than 100" for a more thorough introduction.

Portuguese numbers 11-19

Next, let’s cover the teens. Here's eleven through nineteen in Portuguese:

† The first spelling is used in Brazil; the second spelling is used in Portugal. Normally, an S sandwiched between two vowels will be pronounced as /z/ in Portuguese, so I suppose that they changed that middle E to an A in Portugal to help clarify that ss should be pronounced as /s/, not /z/, but I couldn't actually find an explanation as to why this change was made.

Portuguese numbers 20-100

Now, let’s move onto multiples of ten:

Counting from 21 through 99 works pretty much the same way as it does in English:

So forty-two, for example, would be "quarenta e dois" (Brazil

/ Portugal ), which is literally "forty and two".

Cem vs Cento

The word 100 gets its own section because, in Portuguese, there are actually two words for hundred:

You might think of "cem" as being like "a/one hundred" and cento as being like "hundred".

Portuguese numbers bigger than 100

Now let's take a look at big numbers in Portuguese.

Things begin getting a bit complex here, so take a scroll and listen first, and then we'll regroup to discuss below the table.

§ Note: Brazilian Portuguese follows the U.S. English system (a billion is a thousand millions), whereas European Portuguese follows the rest of the world (where a billion was originally a million millions).

The placement of "e"

Up above, we explained that "e" ("and") is used to make the numbers 21–99. 42, for example, is "quarenta e dois" (Brazil

/ Portugal ), which is literally "forty and two".

You don't use "e" between thousands and hundreds:

You do use "e" with multiples of one hundred:

You do use "e" between thousands and tens:

You do use "e" between thousands and units:

And here's a really big number, just to wrap things up:

Decimal points and commas in Portuguese

Now that we've talked about huge numbers, it would be good to mention that Portuguese handles commas and decimals differently than English does:

Bonus: Ordinal numbers and dates in Portuguese

What we've been talking about so far are called cardinal numbers, which are used to count things.

Ordinal numbers, on the other hand, are used to indicate the order of things.

Portuguese uses ordinal numbers less commonly than English does, so, for now, you can get by with just learning the first three ordinal numbers.

Talking about years and dates in Portuguese

When a date is listed in formal writing—such as in a report or on a poster—you'll pretty often see this formula used:

Less formally, when you want to talk about a date or appointment, you can use this formula:

As you can see, it's not mandatory to list all of the parts out. You can pick and choose, depending on what information you wish to state:

Note: Portuguese prepositions can be tricky. They're beyond the scope of this article, but just a heads up that you should pay attention to them while consuming Portuguese media!

Bonus: Asking for phone numbers in Portuguese

While this isn't exactly about numbers, a common place you'll end up using numbers is when requesting (or giving) phone numbers.

So, here's a simple way to do that:

To ask for a phone number:

To give a phone number:

Numbers in Brazilian Portuguese vs European Portuguese

If you decided to pay homage to the blood, sweat, and tears that went into this article by clicking on all those audio buttons, you'd have noticed something:

It'd take an entire article to talk about the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese, but so far as the numbers go, here are a few things worth paying attention to:

The pronunciation of numbers ending in -s

Go ahead and listen to these two words for me:

In Brazilian Portuguese, an -s at the end of a word is pronounced like a normal S sound.

In European Portuguese, an S at the end of a word is pronounced like an SH sound (/ʃ/ if you know the IPA)

The pronunciation of -te (and sometimes -de)

Now listen to these words for me:

In Brazilian Portuguese,"-te" becomes a CH sound, like the one at the beginning of "cheese" (/ˈsɛ.t͡ʃi/, if you know the IPA). This doesn't happen in European Portuguese: T is pronounced normally, but the vowel following it gets reduced a bit.

Note that:

The pronunciation of -l at the end of the word

This only affects one number, but it's one you'll use quite often. Listen to:

When a word ends in -l in Brazilian Portuguese, it gets "rounded" to /ˈmiw/[ˈmiʊ̯]. If you don't know the IPA—think about replacing the L with a W sound. Conversely, in European Portuguese, an -l at the end of a word is pronounced just it is in English.

Millions and billions (and headaches)

This blew my mind, but take another gander at our table from the "Big Numbers" section:

Notice that bilhão means "billion" in Brazilian portuguese but "trillion" in European Portuguese.

Interesting history lesson here.

From an etymological perspective, a billion is bi- (two) plus million—a million million. Twelve zeroes.

In other words:

You'll unfortunately just have to keep an eye on which region of Portuguese you're interacting with should this number happen to come up.

The spelling of sixteen, seventeen, and nineteen

As mentioned in that second section on how to say the teens in Portuguese:

I'm going to be honest—I looked for an explanation as to why this very specific bone was picked with three very specific numbers, but I couldn't find one.

While I can't explain why this difference exists, it's worth giving a modicum of attention to. (But people will understand you even if you get it wrong, so don't fear 💪)

A better way to learn to count in Portuguese

Part of my dies as I say this, because I spent way too long hunting for audio samples and inserting them into my pretty little tables, but...

Numbers are super common things, and so long as you're regularly interacting with Portuguese, you're going to hear them being used. You'll pick them up naturally over time, intuitively, basically for free.

How?

Well, say you're watching a video on YouTube, where you happen to stumble into a wonderful Portuguese word like milhão.

You're an awesome proactive learner who has read an entire article about Portuguese numbers, so you know this means million (go you)... but, if you didn't, and you were using Migaku, you could just click right on milhão in the subtitles to see a definition of what it means.

If you decide that this word would be useful to know, you can click the big orange button in the top-right corner of the dictionary entry to automatically turn this scene of your video into a flashcard:

Migaku fetched an audio snippet of milhão from the video, subtitle it appeared in, and a picture of what was happening on screen when the word was uttered.

From here, Migaku will periodically nudge you to review this flashcard. Eventually you'll just remember it.

To learn Portuguese with Migaku, all you have to do is consume content you enjoy, then click a couple buttons to turn useful words you find into learning materials.

Try Migaku for free

You learned the numbers in Portuguese! Now, it's time to actually learn Portuguese →

Learning Portuguese isn't easy, it's actually pretty simple:

It's going to take you several hundred hours to learn Portuguese, so you might as well have fun with this.

Boa sorte!