Numbers and telling the time
Portuguese numbers are easy to learn and hard to forget, with two quirks worth knowing up front. First, um/uma and dois/duas are gendered — they agree with whatever you're counting: um real, uma hora, dois livros, duas casas. Second, Brazil spells the teens with an e: dezesseis, dezessete, dezenove. Once 0 to 100 is in your head, telling time is just slotting numbers into a fixed frame: Que horas são? — São três horas.
0 to 20
zero, um / uma, dois / duas, três, quatro, cinco, seis, sete, oito, nove, dez, onze, doze, treze, quatorze, quinze, dezesseis, dezessete, dezoito, dezenove, vinte. The teens from 16 up are built out of dez + e + the unit, and Brazil keeps that e in the spelling: dezesseis, dezessete, dezenove. (Portugal writes them with an a — dezasseis, dezassete, dezanove. You'll see it in books printed there; write the Brazilian form.) For 14, both quatorze and catorze are correct in Brazil; quatorze is what you'll see most. One very Brazilian habit: when reading out a phone number or a house number, seis usually becomes meia (short for meia dúzia, half a dozen) so it isn't confused with três over the phone — meia, dois, três.
Gender on 1 and 2
um livro but uma casa. dois livros but duas casas. The agreement follows into compound numbers: vinte e um reais, vinte e uma horas, trinta e dois dias, trinta e duas aulas. Every other number is invariable — três casas and três livros use the same word, and so do 4 through 100. So the only two you have to think about are the first two, and you'll think about them constantly, because hora is feminine: it's always duas horas, never dois horas.
Tens and the linker e
vinte, trinta, quarenta, cinquenta, sessenta, setenta, oitenta, noventa, cem. Between the tens and the units you must say e: vinte e um, trinta e cinco, noventa e nove. English glues 'twenty-one' into one chunk; Portuguese never does. A round hundred is cem — cem reais — but the moment anything follows it, it becomes cento e: cento e um, cento e cinquenta. Money in Brazil is the real, plural reais: dez reais, cem reais.
Telling the time — the question
Que horas são? = What time is it? (literally 'what hours are?'). Brazilians also just ask Que horas?, or, stopping a stranger on the street, Você tem horas? The answer is plural by default, because you're counting hours: São duas horas, São oito e dez. One o'clock is the exception — singular, because uma hora is singular: É uma hora. Same for É meio-dia (it's noon) and É meia-noite (it's midnight). The word horas itself is usually dropped after the first mention: São três is a complete answer.
And-a-half, quarter past, quarter to
For half past, add e meia: São três e meia (3:30), É meio-dia e meia (12:30). meia here is short for meia hora, so it stays feminine. For the first half of the hour, just add the minutes: São duas e quinze (2:15), São duas e vinte (2:20). Brazilians say e quinze far more than e um quarto, though um quarto is the word for a quarter and everyone understands it. For the second half of the hour, Brazil counts down to the next hour with para as: São quinze para as seis (5:45), São dez para as três (2:50). In fast speech that para as melts into 'pras' — quinze pras seis. The subtraction pattern with menos (seis menos um quarto) is the Portuguese habit; in Brazil it sounds like a math problem.
At what time?
To say when something happens, use às: às três, às nove e meia, às dez da noite. One o'clock takes the singular à: à uma. Noon and midnight take their own articles: ao meio-dia, à meia-noite. To pin down the part of the day, add da manhã (roughly 5 a.m. to noon), da tarde (noon to about 6) or da noite (after that): A aula é às nove da manhã. O jantar é às oito da noite. On invitations, timetables and TV listings Brazil writes the 24-hour clock — às 19h, read out loud as às dezenove horas — but in conversation people go straight back to às sete da noite.
