Counting in Portuguese (Brazil)

Language overview

Brazilian Portugues (português brasileiro) is a romance language from the Indo-European family. Originating from Portugal, it has evolved separately from European Portuguese since the 16^th century, both in spelling and pronunciation. It is regulated by the Brazilian Academy of Letters (Academia Brasileira de Letras). Nowadays spoken by roughly 170 million people in Brasil alone, it is also spoken in Portugal, in five African countries (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe) as well as in Macau and East Timor where the European Portuguese or a creole of it is in use.

Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990

The Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990 (Acordo Ortográfico da Língua Portuguesa de 1990) is an international treaty aimed at creating a unified orthography for the Portuguese language, for all Portuguese-speaking countries. The only change in the numbers names is due to the suppression of the trema in the diacritic qü. Thus, the Brazilian cinqüenta [50] is now written as cinquenta.

Portuguese (Brazil) numbering rules

Now that you’ve had a gist of the most useful numbers, let’s move to the writing rules for the tens, the compound numbers, and why not the hundreds, the thousands and beyond (if possible).

• Digits and numbers from zero to fifteen are specific words, namely zero [0], um [1], dois [2], três [3], quatro [4], cinco [5], seis [6], sete [7], oito [8], nove [9], dez [10], onze [11], doze [12], treze [13], catorze [14], quinze [15]. Sixteen to nineteen are regular numbers, i.e. named after the ten and the digit, and written phonetically: dezesseis [10 and 6], dezessete [10 and 7], dezoito [10 and 8], dezenove [10 and 9].
  The number six can also be said meia, abbreviation of uma meia dúzia (or half a dozen), especially on the phone to differentiate between seis (six) and sete (seven).
• The tens have specific names based on the digits roots except for ten and twenty: dez [10], vinte [20], trinta [30], quarenta [40], cinquenta [50], sessenta [60], setenta [70], oitenta [80] and noventa [90].
• The same applies for the hundreds: cem [100] (plural centos), duzentos [200], trezentos [300], quatrocentos [400], quinhentos [500], seiscentos [600], setecentos [700], oitocentos [800], novecentos [900].
• Tens and units are linked with e (and), as in trinta e cinco [35], as well as hundreds and tens (e.g.: cento e quarenta e seis [146]), but not thousands and hundreds, unless the number ends with a hundred with two zeroes (e.g.: dois mil e trezentos [2,300], but dois mil trezentos e sete [2,307]). E is also used to link thousands and units (e.g.: quatro mil e cinco [4,005]).
• Brazil uses the short scale system to name its big numbers, just as American English. Thus, we have milhão (10⁶, million), bilhão (10⁹, billion), trilhão (10¹², trillion), quatrilhão (10¹⁵, quadrillion), quintilhão (10¹⁸, quintillion), sextilhão (10²¹, sextillion)…

Write a number in full in Portuguese (Brazil)

Let’s move now to the practice of the numbering rules in Portuguese (Brazil). Will you guess how to write a number in full? Enter a number and try to write it down in your head, or maybe on a piece of paper, before displaying the result.

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Romance languages

Asturian, Catalan, Corsican, Eonavian, French, Friulian, Galician, Gallo, Italian, Jèrriais, Ladin, Latin, Lombard (Milanese), Occitan, Picard, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Proto-Indo-European, Romanian, Romansh, Sardinian, Spanish, and Venetian.

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