📖 Portuguese Articles & Noun Gender
Portuguese articles: definite and indefinite forms, plus common contractions. Free Portuguese grammar guide for learners with clear rules and examples.
Reference only. Portuguese cards are not available in Vidi.
Two Genders
Like Italian and Spanish, Portuguese nouns are either masculine or feminine — there is no neuter gender. The patterns are very similar to Spanish: • Most nouns ending in -o are masculine: o livro (the book), o menino (the boy). • Most nouns ending in -a are feminine: a casa (the house), a menina (the girl). • Nouns ending in -e or a consonant can be either gender: o nome (the name, masculine), a noite (the night, feminine). Articles, adjectives, and demonstratives all agree in gender and number with the noun they modify.
Definite Articles
Portuguese definite articles are simpler than Italian — there is one form per gender and number, with no special variants for consonant clusters.
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Masculine | o (o livro) | os (os livros) |
| Feminine | a (a casa) | as (as casas) |
Indefinite Articles
Portuguese is one of the few Romance languages that has plural indefinite articles. While French and Spanish only have singular forms (un/une, un/una), Portuguese has "uns" and "umas" meaning "some" or "a few."
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Masculine | um (um livro — a book) | uns (uns livros — some books) |
| Feminine | uma (uma casa — a house) | umas (umas casas — some houses) |
Contractions
Portuguese extensively contracts prepositions with articles — these contractions are mandatory, not optional. You will encounter them in nearly every sentence. The four most important prepositions that contract are de (of/from), em (in/on/at), a (to), and por (by/through).
| Preposition | + o | + a | + os | + as |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| de (of, from) | do | da | dos | das |
| em (in, on, at) | no | na | nos | nas |
| a (to) | ao | à | aos | às |
| por (by, through) | pelo | pela | pelos | pelas |
Gender Patterns
These suffix-based patterns will help you predict the gender of unfamiliar nouns with high accuracy.
| Ending / Pattern | Gender | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| -ção | Always feminine | a nação, a estação, a ação |
| -dade | Always feminine | a cidade, a universidade, a felicidade |
| -agem | Always feminine | a viagem, a imagem, a linguagem |
| -ade | Always feminine | a saudade, a liberdade |
| -or | Usually masculine | o amor, o calor, o professor |
| -ema (Greek origin) | Masculine | o problema, o sistema, o tema |
| -mente | Not a noun — adverb | felizmente, rapidamente |
Try Vidi's picture cards
Create and review cards in English, German, Spanish, and Ukrainian.
Try Vidi for Free