Numbers, time and dates in Portuguese

vinte e três: an e between tens and units

English joins tens and units with a hyphen and nothing else. Portuguese joins them with e, and the word is not optional: vinte três sounds like two numbers rather than one. The same e links every part of a longer number — trezentos e quarenta e dois.

cem on its own, cento with more after it

«Hundred» has one form in English; Portuguese has two. cem stands alone or before a noun — cem euros, cem anos. As soon as another number follows, it becomes cento: cento e um, cento e cinquenta. cem mil keeps the short form, because the thousand multiplies the hundred rather than continuing it.

When mil is followed by e

British English puts «and» after the thousand only when less than a hundred follows: «a thousand and one». Portuguese goes one step further — the e also appears before a round hundred: mil e um, mil e duzentos. As soon as anything follows the hundred, it drops out after mil and reappears inside the rest.

Two has a feminine form

An English number never changes with what it counts. In Portuguese, one and two do — um livro, uma casa, dois livros, duas casas — and so do the hundreds from two hundred up: duzentos livros, but duzentas casas. Every other number stays as it is.

milhões de pessoas: a million takes de

English treats «million» like any other number: no plural, nothing in between. In Portuguese milhão is a noun, so it takes a plural — dois milhões — and de before what is counted. Mil is not a noun and takes neither: dois mil pessoas.

A billion is mil milhões

European Portuguese kept the long scale. Um bilião is a million millions — the English trillion — so the English billion is mil milhões. The sentence sounds perfect and is out by a factor of a thousand. Brazil uses the short scale and spells the word bilhão, which is why the two are easy to mix up in reading.

A year is just a number

English splits a year into two pairs of digits. Portuguese has no such form: it reads the year as the number it is, thousand, hundreds and all — mil novecentos e oitenta e quatro, dois mil e vinte e quatro. The paired version is not a casual alternative; the listener simply has to work out what you meant.

é uma hora, but são duas horas

English keeps «it’s» whatever the hour. In Portuguese the hours are the subject, and they are plural — são três horas — so the verb follows them. Only one o’clock is singular: é uma hora, and likewise é meio-dia and é meia-noite.

The hour is feminine

Hora is a feminine noun, and it is understood even when nobody says it, so one and two take their feminine forms: é uma, são duas, às duas. Nothing in English gives a hint of this, and dois is the form a learner meets first.

e meia, not e meio

The direction is the same as in English: half past three counts on from three. What catches people out is the ending. The half is half an hour, meia hora, and agrees with it — três e meia. Meio is the masculine form and belongs to meio-dia.

No a.m. or p.m. — da manhã, da tarde

Portuguese does not borrow «a.m.» and «p.m.». In speech the part of the day follows the hour — da manhã, da tarde, da noite, and da madrugada for the small hours. In writing, a timetable or an invitation uses the twenty-four-hour clock: 15h30.

vinte e três de julho, not the 23rd

Two habits at once. Portuguese gives the day as a cardinal number, not an ordinal, and since the 1990 spelling agreement the month takes a small letter, like the days of the week. De links day, month and year: vinte e três de julho de dois mil e vinte e quatro.

vigésimo terceiro: both halves are ordinals

In English only the last part of an ordinal changes: «twenty-third». In Portuguese both parts become ordinals, and the e that is compulsory in the cardinal number disappears — vigésimo terceiro, not vigésimo e terceiro. In figures: 23.º.

três vírgula catorze, not três ponto um quatro

Portuguese writes a comma where English writes a decimal point, and says it: vírgula. A short tail is read as a number rather than digit by digit — vírgula catorze; only a longer one is spelt out figure by figure.

1.250,50 € — the English signs swapped round

In Portugal a comma never groups thousands; it marks the decimals. Thousands are grouped with a full stop or a space, and the euro sign goes after the amount. Written the English way, €1,250.50 reads to a Portuguese eye as a little over one euro.