Adjectives: gender and number agreement

Agreement is the stitching that holds a Portuguese phrase together. When every word carries the same gender and number, a listener hears one idea; when they do not, the words arrive separately and have to be reassembled. It is also the fastest tell in the language — ✗ um cerveja gelado gives you away three words in, while ✓ uma cerveja gelada (an ice-cold beer) does not. The good news is that this is one rule with a short list of exceptions, and once it clicks it runs quietly in the background for the rest of your Portuguese.

The adjective copies the noun

Portuguese adjectives are copycats. Whatever gender and number the noun is carrying, the adjective picks it up and repeats it back. Adjectives whose masculine form ends in -o have the full set of four:

• o hotel barato (the cheap hotel) · a pousada barata (the cheap guesthouse)

• os hotéis baratos (the cheap hotels) · as pousadas baratas (the cheap guesthouses)

Describing people

• "Minha irmã é muito simpática." (My sister is very friendly.)

• "Meus primos são engraçados." (My cousins are funny.)

• "As crianças estão cansadas." (The children are tired.)

• "Ele é alto e ela é baixa." (He is tall and she is short.)

Shopping and things

• "Comprei duas camisetas brancas." (I bought two white T-shirts.)

• "Esses sapatos são caros demais." (Those shoes are far too expensive.)

• "Essa mala é grande e essa aqui é pequena." (That suitcase is big and this one is small.)

• "Os produtos brasileiros são bons." (Brazilian products are good.)

The noun's gender wins, not its last letter

Problema, dia and mapa end in -a and are all masculine, so the adjective goes masculine too:

• um problema sério (a serious problem) — never séria

• um dia longo (a long day)

muito and pouco freeze in front of an adjective

Before a noun they behave like ordinary adjectives — muitas pessoas (many people), poucos lugares (few places). Propping up another adjective they are adverbs, and adverbs never agree:

• Elas são muito simpáticas. (They are very friendly.) — never muitas simpáticas

• A prova foi muito difícil. (The exam was very hard.)

meio: "half" agrees, "a bit" does not

Meaning "half", meio is an adjective and agrees: meia hora (half an hour), meio quilo (half a kilo). Meaning "a bit", it is an adverb and stays frozen even in front of a feminine adjective:

In everyday speech, Brazilians often mark the plural only once. As menina bonita rather than as meninas bonitas is not carelessness — it is a variable rule that sociolinguists have been measuring since the 1970s, with Lemle and Naro tying the survival of the -s to how audible the singular/plural contrast is, and Scherre showing that speakers also copy whatever the previous word did. Grammar books, exams and anything written still mark every word, which is what this lesson teaches. Source: SciELO — Revista DELTA.

Pink got a special dispensation from the spelling reform. Colour phrases built on cor de… lost their hyphens — it is cor de laranja now — but cor-de-rosa kept both of its own, because the Academia Brasileira de Letras lists it among the compounds already consagradas pelo uso. People have been arguing about why pink, and only pink, got the exemption ever since. Source: Dicio.