Portuguese words you already know

Portuguese surprises people. On the page it shares an enormous amount of vocabulary with English, because both languages lean heavily on Latin. These shared words are called cognates — words that look and mean almost the same in both languages — and Portuguese is full of them. Spot the patterns and you can read and follow a great deal of Portuguese before you've learned any grammar.

What makes Portuguese distinctive is its sound, not its vocabulary: rich, nasal vowels and a rhythm that differs between Brazil and Portugal. But the words below you can already recognise today. Here are the patterns and lists that unlock them.

Five patterns that unlock thousands of words

Cognates follow predictable rules. Learn these five and you can often guess the Portuguese word straight from the English one.

1. English -tion → Portuguese -ção

The single most useful pattern. Nearly any English -tion word has a Portuguese twin ending in -ção (always feminine: a).

2. English -ty → Portuguese -dade

Abstract nouns ending in -ty become -dade.

3. English -ous → Portuguese -oso

Adjectives ending in -ous map onto -oso (or -osa).

4. English -ment → Portuguese -mento

Concrete nouns ending in -ment usually add an -o.

5. English -ble → Portuguese -vel

A distinctive Portuguese pattern: many -ble adjectives end in -vel.

Words that are already almost identical

Many everyday Portuguese words need no pattern at all. Here are some you'll use constantly, grouped by where you'll meet them.

Travel and getting around

Food and drink

Everyday life

Watch out: a few false friends

A few Portuguese words look English but mean something else — and one of them is on doors everywhere: puxar means to pull, not push. Also keep an eye out for pasta (a folder, not pasta), esquisito (strange, not exquisite), and livraria (a bookshop, not a library — that's biblioteca). There are more on the Learn Portuguese page.

From recognising words to speaking them

Recognising hundreds of words on sight is a real head start — but reading a word and confidently saying it are different skills, and Portuguese pronunciation is where most beginners get stuck. That's exactly the gap Navoq closes. You start from the words you already know, then practise them out loud in short, real sentences with instant pronunciation feedback, so your ear and mouth catch up with your eyes.

The cognates above are your first few hundred words for free. The next step is making them yours.