When you’re writing in a new language, you can get around numbers pretty easily by just writing numerals. But when you’re speaking aloud, you don’t have the luxury of that (and once you get past 10, your fingers won’t help much either). Thus, learning how to count to 100 in Portuguese is a pretty helpful thing to master when you’re learning the basics of the language.
Rather than just list out all the numbers, however, we’ll give you the building blocks of numbers and then how to put them together. Learning exactly how they work will be far more helpful than trying to just go one by one, anyway. First we’ll give you the first 20 numbers — we would do just the first 10, but the “teens” in Portuguese, like most European languages, tend to not follow a simple formula. In English, for example, ten-one would make more sense than “eleven,” but it’s too late to change it now. After that, we’ll give you the rest of the numbers and show you how to put them together. It’s easy!
Counting From Zero To Twenty In Portuguese
zero — zero
one — um
two — dois
three — três
four — quatro
five — cinco
six — seis
seven — sete
eight — oito
nine — nove
ten — dez
eleven — onze
twelve — doze
thirteen — treze
fourteen — quatorze
fifteen — quinze
sixteen — dezesseis
seventeen — dezessete
eighteen — dezoito
nineteen — dezenove
twenty — vinte
The Rest Of The Tens In Portuguese
thirty — trinta
forty — quarenta
fifty — cinquenta
sixty — sessenta
seventy — setenta
eighty — oitenta
ninety — noventa
one hundred — cem
Putting It All Together
Portuguese is perhaps one of the easiest languages for making numbers. All you have to do is combine numbers with e, which is Portuguese for “and.” Thus, 29 is vinte e nove, 98 is noventa e oito and on and on. This pattern continues even into the hundreds (though cem becomes cento), so 136 is cento e trinta e seis. Once you’ve mastered the numbers shown here, there’s not much else to it. Happy counting!