The 200 Most Common Portuguese Words: Frequency Lists

Portuguese Words: Articles

While there are more articles in Portuguese than English, it’s very similar to French or Spanish articles for those who are already familiar with those languages. We’ve broken these Portuguese articles down by gender and plurality here:

• o – the (masculine)
• a – the (feminine)
• os – the (masculine plural)
• as – the (feminine plural)
• um – a/an (masculine)
• uma – a/an (feminine)
• dos – some (masculine)
• das – some (feminine)

Pronouns

Pronouns are equally useful Portuguese words. Here’s a review table of personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, and reflexive pronouns (also used as indirect object pronouns).

Be careful with tu and você! In Portugal, to indicate second person singular, you’ll mostly use tu. Você is reserved for formal use in professional settings, with strangers, or with the elderly. Meanwhile in Brazil, there isn’t a distinction between regular and formal use of ‘you.’ Brazilians generally use você to refer to the person they’re talking to. It’s a small linguistic difference that can make all the difference depending on whether you’re in Portugal or Brazil.

As for possessive pronouns (my, your, his/her, our, their) that are being used for possession of multiple objects, you can just add an -s to the singular possessive pronoun. For example:

• my: meu → meus / minha → minhas
• our: nosso → nossos
• their: seu → seus / sua → suas

Other Pronouns

• Demonstrative Pronouns
  

Among the other pronouns, there’s also demonstrative pronouns:

• este – this (masculine)
• esta – this (feminine)
• isto – this (neutral)
• aquilo – that

• Indefinite Pronouns
  

People

Among the most used Portuguese words are the vocabulary related to people and family. Here’s what you need to know:

Time

The passage of time is also very important. That’s why it’s no surprise that we see this vocabulary mixed in with the most commonly used words.

The World

Knowing how to talk about the world around you is also essential. Here’s a frequency list for these words in Portuguese.

Other Nouns

Numbers

Knowing how to count is equally important. Even if all the numbers aren’t listed, it’s still recommended to know at least the ones written here.

Verbs

• Auxiliary and Modal
  

It goes without saying that the conjugated verbs in this chart don’t comprise all of the conjugations used. These are just the most frequent conjugations. So feel free to learn all of them!

Hint: start with conjugating for the first three singular pronouns in present tense. That’ll help you a lot! And this advice applies to every verb that you encounter.

• Common Verbs
  

To say “there is” something in Portuguese, you can just conjugate the verb haver to há.

Adjectives

Here are the most commonly used Portuguese adjectives.

Adverbs

It’s important to know the most common adverbs so you can make more structured sentences. Here are some adverbs that will help you begin to communicate with ease.

Prepositions

Coordinating Conjunctions, Logical Connectors, and More

Question Words

The most common question words are as follows:

• como – how
• onde – where
• por que – why
• quando – when
• qual – which
• que / o que – what, which
• quem – who

Anecdotes about Portuguese Words

Did you know that some English words came from Portuguese? Even though both languages share some Latin roots, it’s interesting to see how they later impacted each other. Here are some words that we took directly from Portuguese:

• açaí: this trendy berry’s name was actually taken directly from Portuguese and found its way into our everyday grocery stores.
• creole : this word comes from the Portuguese crioulo, which means “the servants fed at home” as a way to described mixed-race slaves in Brazil. Today in English, it more often refers to a mix of languages
• lingo: in English we use this word as a synonym for “jargon,” but it is derived from the Portuguese word lingua, which actually just means “language” in Portuguese
• mosquito: this word is used for specific blood-sucking pests we all agree to hate, but in Portuguese, mosquito can apply not just to mosquitos in English, but also to flies and gnats.
• tapioca: it’s a dessert that you either love or hate, but the original word actually came from the South American Tupi language as tipi’óka. When the Brazilians first arrived in South America, they modified the pronunciation to tapioca which then transferred over to English.

There are many more words than this, of course, and we’d recommend looking them up. Then you can see for yourself just how interesting it can be to discover the origin of words and the connections that exist between languages.

Happy Learning!

For More Information

If you’d like frequency lists for other languages, here are some articles that you might interest you:

• The Most Common English Words: English Frequency List
• The 100 Most Common Spanish Words: Frequency Lists
• Frequency List: The 300 Most Common Italian Words