Learn Portuguese through English
Learn Português through English
Every lesson explains Portuguese by comparing it directly to English grammar and vocabulary — word order, case marking, formal speech, and more — instead of translating through English.
All Lessons
Greetings & Formality
Greetings & Formality
European Portuguese keeps a live formal/informal split that English lost long ago — but its most distinctive quirk is a word for "thank you" that changes depending on who's speaking, not who's listening.
Alphabet & Pronunciation
Alphabet & Pronunciation
European Portuguese uses the same 26 letters as English, but its sound system — nasal vowels, swallowed unstressed vowels, and a few letter combinations with no English equivalent — gives it a very distinct sound of its own.
Numbers 1–10
Numbers 1–10
The first ten Portuguese numbers are the building blocks for every larger number you'll ever say — and two of them come with a small twist English doesn't have.
Personal Pronouns & 'to be' (×2) / 'to have'
Personal Pronouns & 'to be' (×2) / 'to have'
Portuguese does something English can't: it splits "to be" into two completely different verbs depending on whether you mean something permanent or something temporary.
Articles & Gender
Articles & Gender
Every Portuguese noun is masculine or feminine, a category English lost long ago — but the ending of the word is usually a reliable clue, which makes Portuguese gender fairly guessable from day one.
Family
Family
Family words are a natural place to see the -o/-a gender pattern in action, since almost every relative's name follows it neatly — plus one very handy trick Portuguese has that English lacks: a single plural word covers "parents", "sons", or "siblings" depending on context.
Question Words
Question Words
Portuguese question words map neatly onto English ones — with one pair worth learning carefully, since they're spelled almost identically but mean opposite things.
Sentence Structure
Sentence Structure
Good news for English speakers: Portuguese word order stays close to English's default pattern. The main adjustment is where adjectives go, not how the sentence is built.
Numbers 11–100
Numbers 11–100
Beyond ten, Portuguese numbers settle into a predictable rhythm — a handful of new words for the tens, then simple combinations for everything in between.
Plural Nouns
Plural Nouns
Most Portuguese plurals just add -s, comfortably close to English — but words ending in -ão hide one of the trickiest, most memorization-heavy corners of the language.
Present Tense Verbs
Present Tense Verbs
Regular Portuguese verbs fall into three families by their infinitive ending — -ar, -er, -ir — and once you learn one pattern, dozens of verbs immediately become usable.
Modal Verbs
Modal Verbs
Poder (can), dever (must/should), and querer (want) unlock a huge range of sentences on their own — each pairs directly with another verb's infinitive.
Negation
Negation
The sentence-structure lesson already showed you the basic rule — this lesson goes further with the vocabulary negation actually needs, including a case where doubling up is required, not a mistake.
Adjective Agreement
Adjective Agreement
Portuguese adjectives change their ending to match the noun they describe — something English adjectives never do — and, as the sentence-structure lesson mentioned, they usually trail behind the noun.
Possessive Adjectives
Possessive Adjectives
Portuguese possessives — my, your, our — agree with the thing being owned, the same way ordinary adjectives do, and often pair with the definite article too.
Daily Routine & Reflexive Verbs
Daily Routine & Reflexive Verbs
Describing a typical day introduces Portuguese's reflexive verbs — actions you do to yourself, marked with se — which show up far more often than their English equivalents suggest.