Numbers in Portuguese: 1 to a Billion (Complete Guide)

Numbers are the first thing you actually need. The price, the time, the platform, your age. You can survive without saying "the beach is beautiful". You cannot survive without understanding doze euros▶.

Portuguese numbers are regular and mostly predictable. There is no backwards flip like German, no quatre-vingt-dix like French. If you have any Spanish, you are already most of the way there.

There are exactly three things that catch English speakers, and all three are things English simply does not do. Here they are, with everything else.

1 to 20

From 16 the logic starts: dez + the digit. Below 16, memorise.

First Brazil/Portugal split, and it lands right here:

Portugal uses deza-, Brazil uses deze-. Both are correct, both are understood everywhere. Pick the one for where you are going and stop thinking about it.

The tens

All regular, all transparent. And note what is not here: no four-twenties, no three-score. Portuguese has a plain word for 70, 80 and 90.

Building any number: the e rule

tens + e + units. The e ("and") is obligatory, unlike Spanish where it disappears above 30.

Three separate words, always. Vinteum does not exist.

And it keeps going at three digits: cento e vinte e três▶ (123). Two es. Portuguese is generous with them, and dropping them is the mark of a Spanish speaker guessing.

Table: 1 to 100

Trap 1: numbers have a gender

English has no idea this is a thing, and it is the mistake that marks you instantly.

1 and 2 change according to what they count:

duas▶, not dois, for anything feminine. Dois cervejas is wrong, and it is the single most common English-speaker error in Portuguese numbers.

And it carries into big numbers: vinte e duas pessoas▶ (22 people, feminine), vinte e dois euros▶ (22 euros, masculine).

The hundreds do it too, from 200 up:

duzentos euros▶, but duzentas pessoas▶.

Trap 2: cem or cento?

So cem euros▶ (100 euros), but cento e um▶ (101). Never cem e um.

The hundreds and thousands

quinhentos▶ (500) is the irregular one worth memorising. It is not cincocentos.

mil▶ never changes and never takes um. It is mil euros▶, not um mil euros. At a million the um comes back: um milhão▶.

And milhão▶ takes de: um milhão de euros▶, exactly like English "a million of..." would not. This one catches everybody.

Trap 3: the billion

Here is where real money gets lost, and Portuguese is genuinely split down the middle.

Brazil uses the short scale. Portugal uses the long scale. They are the same language and they disagree about what a billion is.

Read that table twice, because it is genuinely awkward:

• In Brazil, um bilhão▶ is 10⁹. Same as the English billion. Easy.
• In Portugal, um bilião▶ is 10¹², which is the English trillion. And 10⁹ has no single word: you say mil milhões▶ (a thousand millions).

So três biliões in a Lisbon newspaper is a thousand times bigger than três bilhões in a São Paulo one. The spelling differs by one letter.

The safe move: in Portugal, say mil milhões▶ for a billion. It is unambiguous on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ordinals

They agree in gender: o primeiro dia▶, a primeira vez▶.

Past 10, nobody uses them. A Portuguese speaker says o andar doze▶ (floor twelve), not o décimo segundo andar. Do not learn ordinals beyond ten, you will never hear them.

And the floor trap: in Portugal, the rés-do-chão▶ is the ground floor, and the primeiro andar▶ is one flight up. In Brazil, térreo▶ for the ground floor.

Fractions, decimals and money

Punctuation is European, the reverse of English:

• The comma is the decimal point: 3,14 is três vírgula catorze▶.
• The dot separates thousands: 1.000 means one thousand.

A price tag reading 1.500 in Lisbon is fifteen hundred. And €2,50 is two euros fifty.

Pronunciation: what the spelling hides

The nasals are the whole game. um▶, cem▶, cento▶, vinte▶, milhão▶ all end in a nasal sound that English does not have. um▶ is not "oom": the sound goes through your nose and the m is never really pronounced.

You cannot get this off the page. It has to come through your ears.

sessenta▶ (60) and setenta▶ (70) sound dangerously alike at speed. Same problem as Spanish. This is the confusion that costs money, so make people repeat: Pode repetir, por favor?▶

And the big one, Portugal vs Brazil: European Portuguese swallows unstressed vowels. sete▶ sounds close to set in Lisbon and clearly SEH-chee in Rio. Brazilian Portuguese pronounces everything and is markedly easier to understand as a beginner.

If you learn on Brazilian material and land in Porto, you will understand nothing at first. That is normal, and it is not your fault. Pick one variety early, because your ear needs a reference.

The numbers you'll use first

Forget counting to a hundred. This is your first hour:

Somos quatro▶ is the one you use first, every single evening: it is what they ask you at the door of every restaurant.

How this becomes automatic

Reading a table does nothing when the price lands at full speed and your brain needs two seconds to convert.

Numbers are where the gap between knowing and being able to say is most brutal, because they always arrive fast and with no context to help you guess.

Three things:

1. Out loud, and fast. Take quarenta e cinco▶ and vary one element: quarenta e seis, cinquenta e cinco, quarenta e cinco euros. Combine that drill with active recall, and treat speed as the mechanism, not a bonus: slowly, your brain has time to route through English, and that detour is exactly what you want gone.
2. Through your ears, never off the page. The nasals and the swallowed vowels are invisible in writing. Listen and repeat right behind, which is shadowing.
3. Your numbers. Your age, your phone number, your floor, your train time. Those are your language islands, and they beat counting to a hundred.

That is exactly what the Hyperpolyglot app is built for: you write the phrases your life actually needs, they come back in a native voice, and you loop them until they arrive without translation. Available on iOS, Android, and Web.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

1. Saying dois cervejas. It is duas cervejas▶. Numbers have gender, and this is the giveaway error.
2. Dropping the e. It is vinte e um▶, three words, always.
3. Saying um mil. It is just mil▶.
4. Forgetting de after milhão. um milhão de euros▶.
5. Confusing cem▶ and cento▶. 100 exactly, or 101 to 199.
6. Assuming bilião means billion. In Portugal it is a trillion. Say mil milhões▶ to be safe.
7. Reading 1.500 as one and a half. The dot separates thousands.
8. Learning ordinals past ten. Nobody says them.
9. Mixing Brazilian and European. Both are correct, but your ear needs one reference.
10. Practising silently. Numbers arrive fast in real life. They train out loud or not at all.

Keep Reading

• Hello in Portuguese -- the first phrases
• Active Recall -- how to make numbers automatic
• Language Islands -- picking your own numbers
• The Shadowing Technique -- the nasals and the swallowed vowels