How does gender agreement work?

The numbers one and two and all the hundreds from 200 to 900 agree in gender with the noun they count. Masculine gives um, dois, duzentos, trezentos, and feminine gives uma, duas, duzentas, trezentas. Only the units group of a large number takes the selected gender; thousands and millions are always read in the masculine, so two thousand chairs is duas mil only for the final part, while the scale words stay masculine.

When is it cem and when is it cento?

Exactly one hundred is cem, as in cem livros. Any number from 101 to 199 uses cento, as in cento e um and cento e cinquenta. The tool applies this automatically based on whether the hundreds group is exactly 100.

What do the e connectors follow?

Portuguese joins the parts inside a three-digit group with e (cento e vinte e três) and inserts e before the final group when that group is below 100 or is a round hundred (mil e duzentos, mil e cinquenta). When the final group is between 101 and 999 and not a round hundred, no e is used (mil duzentos e trinta).

What changes between European and Brazilian Portuguese?

The teens 16, 17, and 19 are dezasseis, dezassete, and dezanove in European Portuguese versus dezesseis, dezessete, and dezenove in Brazilian. The large scales also differ: Brazilian uses the short scale (bilhão for 10^9, trilhão for 10^12), while European Portuguese uses mil milhões for 10^9 and bilião for 10^12.

Why does one thousand show as mil and not um mil?

Portuguese drops the leading um before mil, so 1000 is mil, not um mil. The same applies to the European long-scale mil milhões, which is written without a leading um. The tool handles both cases.

Portuguese Number to Words

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This tool spells out whole numbers in Portuguese (por extenso) with the gender, hundreds, and connector rules that trip up naive converters. It also switches cleanly between European and Brazilian forms, which differ both in the teens and in the names of the large scales.

How it works

The number is split into three-digit groups from the right. Each group is read with its hundreds, tens, and units, joined internally by e. Then the groups are combined with scale words (mil, milhão, bilhão and so on) and the inter-group e rule:

123       -> cento e vinte e três
200 (f)   -> duzentas
1000      -> mil            (not "um mil")
1200      -> mil e duzentos
1230      -> mil duzentos e trinta
2 000 000 -> dois milhões

Only the lowest group takes the gender you select; higher groups read in the masculine, because the scale words themselves are masculine.

European versus Brazilian

Switch on European Portuguese to get dezasseis, dezassete, and dezanove in the teens, and the long-scale large numbers: mil milhões for 10^9 and bilião for 10^12. Brazilian Portuguese keeps dezesseis and the short scale, where bilhão already means 10^9. The default sentence settings are masculine and Brazilian; flip the gender for feminine nouns such as duas cadeiras or duzentas páginas.