Portuguese Basic -Articles, Nouns and Gender Assignment

Articles, Nouns, and Gender Assignment

• Almost every Portuguese noun is assigned an article

• We have :

  MASCULINE articles and FEMININE articles and these can be singular or plural

  (for exemple 'a chair' is feminine while 'the sun' is masculine)

​Some background

​Some background

​We have definitive (the sun) and indefinite articles (a chair)

Indefinite articles are used to speak about something that we are presenting in the discourse for the first time.

Definite articles are here to tell us about some noun that we already know and they introduce something more specific.

Examples:
Tenho um ( indefinite masculine singular article ) livro bonito. / I have a beautiful book.
- Its the first time I am speaking about this book so I use the indefinite

O livro é branco ( definite masculine singular ) / The book is white.
- It's the definite masculine article, but now I already introduce the book, so I use 'o'

​Gender :

• In Portuguese nouns can be masculine or feminine

  • sometimes is difficult to determine which is masc. or fem. and like in every rule they are exceptions, but in general if you follow these rules you will be correct more often probably

​Rules for assigning gender in Portuguese

• Masculine Nouns

• Words ending in 'o' are generally masculine

• Example :

o carro (the car)
o cavalo (the horse)
o quadro (the frame)

• Words ending in 'ama' or 'ema' are also masculine

• Example:

  o programa (the program)

  o pijama (the pyjama)

  o tema (the theme)

  o problema (the problem)

​Rules for assigning gender in Portuguese

• Feminine Nouns

• Words ending in 'a' are generally

  feminine

• Examples:
  

  a casa (the house)
  a banana (the banana)
  a cama (the bed)

• Words ending in 'ção', which have the translation to words ending in 'ion' in English are generally feminine

• Example:

  a ação (the action)

  a tradução (the translation)

  a poluição (the pollution)

​Rules for assign gender in Portuguese

• Feminine Nouns

• Words that end in 'gem' or 'ade' are also generally feminine

• Examples:

  a cidade (the city)

  a margem (the margin)

  a garagem (the garage)

  a verdade (the truth)

  a paragem (the stop)

Multiple Select

Which nouns are FEMININE?

• o rapaz

• a bicicleta

• a tradução

• o dedo

• a verdade

Multiple Select

Which nouns are MASCULINE?

• o carro

• o tema

• a poluição

• a paragem