Brazilian Portuguese Grammar

Verb to be corresponds to two verbs in Portuguese: ser and estar.

Most ordinal numbers must agree in gender with the nouns they refer to.

Cardinal numbers such as um (one), dois (two) and those ending in -centos, - nhentos and -zentos also agree in gender with nouns. Numbers ending in -ão agree in gender and number.

Adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions are invariable parts of speech - they don't agree in gender and number with the words they accompany.

There aren't grammatical cases (declension) in Portuguese. Words, phrases and clauses are subject to a large number of agreement and placement rules.

Negative sentences are usually formed by placing the adverb não right before the verb or the verb phrase:

Portuguese	English
Eles não são franceses.	They are not French.
Eu não falo chinês.	I do not speak Chinese.
Ela ainda não tinha lido o livro.	She had not read the book yet.

Interrogative sentences are formed by simply using a rising intonation - there isn't inversion:

Portuguese	English
Você é brasileiro?	Are you Brazilian?
Eles têm quatro filhos?	Do they have four children?
Ele já comeu feijoada?	*Has he ever eaten feijoada?*
Quando ele nasceu?	When was he born?
Onde ela trabalha?	Where does she work?

Some kinds of questions require subject-verb inversion:

Examples

Quanto são cinco mais três?

How much is five plus three?

Portuguese sentences may have a null subject:

Examples

São três horas.

It's three o'clock.

Está muito quente aqui.

It's very hot here.

Havia duzentas pessoas na festa.

There were two hundred people at the party.

The Portuguese vowel inventory consists of oral and nasal vowels, diphthongs and triphthongs, which may also be oral and nasal.

Diacritics are used to indicate word stress, hiatus, vowel quality and pronunciation:

Portuguese	English	Example
acento agudo	acute accent	pássaro bird
acento grave	grave accent	às vezes sometimes
acento circunflexo	circumflex accent	ônibus bus
trema	dieresis	lingüiça pork sausage
til	tilde	irmão brother
cedilha	cedilla	muçulmano Muslim