European Countries and Nationalities

Things you need to know about countries and nationalities in Portuguese:

1. Most countries have a gender assigned to them and are preceded by a definite article.

• Feminine:
  • A França (France)
  • A Itália (Italy)
• Masculine:
  • O México (Mexico)
• Os Estados Unidos da América (the United States of America)

But there are a few countries that don’t have gender and don’t need any articles:

• Portugal (Portugal)
• Marrocos (Morocco)
• Cuba (Cuba)

2. Nationalities are adjectives and follow the agreement rules for adjectives. They can be singular or plural, masculine or feminine, but there are a few sneaky nationalities that have a single word to cover both genders.

3. For languages, the masculine form of the nationality is used.

• português (Portuguese)
• inglês (English)
• espanhol (Spanish)

4. When you write these nationalities or languages in Portuguese, keep it in lowercase.

Learn the names of European countries and practice your pronunciation.