Comparatives: mais… do que; menos… do que; "que nem" (colloquial)

• mais / menos + (do) que = more / less… than — the do is optional and carries no meaning

• Works in front of adjectives, adverbs and nouns, and after verbs

• Four adjectives refuse mais: bom→melhor, ruim→pior, grande→maior, pequeno→menor

• ❌ mais bom, ❌ mais grande — the two classic learner mistakes

• But mais velho and mais novo are regular and correct

• Equality: tão + adj + quanto · tanto(s)/tanta(s) + noun + quanto · verb + tanto quanto

• Out loud Brazil says que nem, igual a or feito for "just like"

• Before a number use de: mais de vinte pessoas

Comparing is how you choose a restaurant, argue about football, complain about prices and explain who in the family you take after — so this is one of the few grammar points you will use before you finish reading it. The good news is that mais and menos never change shape and go in front of anything. The bad news fits in one line: four extremely common adjectives refuse them outright, and mais bom or mais grande will get you spotted as a learner faster than any accent. Learn those four, then learn que nem, and you can hold up your end of the national sport of comparing everything to everything else.

More and less: one pattern, four word classes

Mais and menos never change shape, and they sit in front of whatever you are measuring.

The do is optional. Do que and que are both correct, and the same Brazilian will use both within one conversation without noticing. Neither is more educated than the other and neither belongs to a particular region.

Shopping and choosing

• "Esse é mais barato que o outro." (This one's cheaper than the other.)

• "A loja do centro tem mais opções." (The shop downtown has more options.)

• "Ficou bem mais caro este ano." (It's got a lot more expensive this year.)

• "Tem algum menor?" (Do you have a smaller one?)

People

• "Minha irmã é mais nova que eu." (My sister is younger than me.)

• "Ele é tão teimoso quanto o avô." (He's as stubborn as his grandfather.)

• "Ela dirige melhor que todo mundo aqui." (She drives better than everyone here.)

• "Tenho menos paciência do que você." (I have less patience than you.)

melhor and pior are adverbs too

They cover bom → melhor and bem → melhor, so there is no mais bem:

• ✅ "Ela canta melhor que eu." ❌ Ela canta mais bem que eu.

• ✅ "Ele dirige pior depois do almoço." ❌ mais mal

Mais pequeno is European, not Brazilian

You will meet mais pequeno in material from Portugal, where it is normal. In Brazil the comparative of pequeno is menor, and mais pequeno sounds imported. The same goes double for mais grande, which is wrong in both countries.

Que nem is for speaking, not for writing

Nobody will correct you for saying que nem — it is what everyone says. But in an email, an exam or anything printed, switch to como or tão… quanto:

• spoken: "Ele fala que nem carioca."

• written: "Ele fala como um carioca."

Brazilians are regularly told that que nem is careless speech — one reader wrote to the grammarian Silveira Bueno to ask whether it was grosso caipirismo, roughly "crude hick talk". His answer was that it is bom português, found in good authors; Cegalla files it as a popular equivalent of como, and Napoleão Mendes de Almeida traces it through the vernacular with a literary example of his own. Its strange shape is the fossil of a longer sentence: Ela pula que nem uma guariba started life as "she jumps in such a way that not even a howler monkey jumps like that", and the nem is all that survives of the "not even". Sources: Migalhas — Gramatigalhas · Ciberdúvidas.