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.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
The default: just add -s
livro → livros, casa → casas, carro → carros
book → books, house → houses, car → cars
Most nouns pluralize exactly the way English does — add -s, nothing else changes: livro becomes livros, casa becomes casas. Words already ending in a vowel behave this way almost without exception, which covers the large majority of nouns you'll meet early on.
-ão has three possible plurals — and no reliable rule for which
mão → mãos, pão → pães, irmão → irmãos
hand → hands, bread → breads, brother → brothers
This is the single trickiest spot in Portuguese plurals: nouns ending in -ão can become -ãos, -ães, or -ões in the plural, and there's no dependable rule for predicting which — you simply learn each noun's plural alongside the singular. mão (hand) → mãos, pão (bread) → pães, irmão (brother) → irmãos are three real words, three different outcomes. -ões is the most common of the three for abstract/derived nouns, but exceptions are everywhere, so treat every new -ão word as its own case.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
- English
- book
- English
- books
- English
- house
- English
- houses
- English
- hand
- English
- hands
- English
- bread
- English
- breads / loaves
- English
- brother
- English
- brothers