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Definite Articles in Portuguese

TagsDefinite and Indefinite Articles Determiners Gender Agreement Grammar Plurals
UnitNouns
6 min read

A substantivonoun is basically a person, place, or thing. When we think of nouns, we tend to think of vocabulary words. But before we go adding a bunch of Portuguese words to your vocabulary, we have to get some boring really fun stuff out of the way first…

Gender & Number

In Portuguese, almost every noun is considered either masculine or feminine. If you’ve never studied a Romance language before, this may seem strange at first. After all, in English we usually only assign gender to people or living things, right? Well, believe it or not, Old English used to use gender in a similar way, but it fell out of use over time.
Nouns are not the only Portuguese words that are affected by gender. For example, there are 4 words which all translate to the:

These are known as artigos definidosdefinite articles . Similar to the in English, when we talk about a noun that has already been defined (the book), we use a definite article like o/a/os/as.
Why 4 different words with one meaning? In Portuguese, you’ll find that many classes of words take on different forms, depending on the following two properties:

  • Gender: masculine (o, os) or feminine (a, as)
  • Number: singular (o, a) or plural (os, as)

Masculine or feminine? How will I know? 🤔

Gendered words are the norm for Portuguese speakers. But as a learner, how are you supposed to know whether a word is masculine or feminine, other than simply memorizing them all?
To get started, these guidelines will often help:

But don’t get too comfortable… You’ll definitely come across words that break this rule, and many that end in a letter other than a or o.

As you may have noticed already, all it takes to make a definite article plural is to add an s. This also applies to many nouns, such as mesas and carros above. Unfortunately, there are more complicated rules for making many other words plural, but we’ll worry about that later… 😉

When to Use Definite Articles

Similar to how we use the in English, Portuguese definite articles often appear before a noun:
O homem lê o jornalThe man reads the newspaper
However, it doesn’t always map perfectly to English like this. There are also situations in which definite articles are used in Portuguese, but not in English, and vice versa. (This may be confusing at first, but it will seem more natural after you’ve had more exposure to the language.)
Here are a few examples of when to include o/a/os/as in Portuguese:

When Not to Use Definite Articles

Here are a few common examples:

  • When referring to something more general or undefined, you typically drop the definite article, and may or may not include an indefinite article (we’ll cover these later in this unit)
    • Não tenho carroI don't have a car – Without the article, this statement becomes more general, just like I have children, I have a job, etc.
    • Ele comprou um carroHe bought a car   – The word um is an indefinite article.
  • When using the vocative case, such as in greetings: Olá Ana!Hi Ana!
  • Before planets, stars, and most cities: Lisboa é a capital de PortugalLisbon is the capital of Portugal , unless the name derives from a common noun, as in: O Porto é a segunda maior cidade de PortugalPorto is the second largest city of Portugal . The word porto also means port/harbour.

A Quick Note About Learning Vocabulary

When we introduce individual vocabulary words throughout the Units, Shorties, etc., we will usually include the definite article, as such:
a palavraword
It’s more efficient to learn the gender at the same time you learn the noun. To avoid lots of unnecessary repetition in vocabulary lists, the English translation will usually not include the word “the”.