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Mass vs Count Nouns in Portuguese (Equivalents of Much-vs-Many and Little-vs-Few)
Nouns can be divided into different categories, i.e. mass and count nouns.
Mass nouns relate to things or concepts we usually wouldn’t count such as “money” or “patience.” In English, we often use the quantifiers much and little when referring to mass nouns (e.g. “she drinks too much/little coffee” ).
Count nouns on the other hand, as the name suggests, are countable (things like “oranges” or ”images”). In English, we tend to use the quantifiers many and few when referring to count nouns (e.g. “she drinks many/a few beers a day.” ).
*Note that the expression a lot is a bit of a wild card and is often used in association with both mass and count nouns.
Now, question for you: what are the Portuguese equivalents of “much” vs “many” and “little” vs “few”? Have you ever thought about it? Read on.
Much vs Many in Portuguese
As mentioned before, “much” and “many” are used in conjunction with mass and count nouns respectively. Being a simple language (no joke intended, ahah), Portuguese has only “muito” to deal with either type of noun.
However, in the quality of quantifier (not adverb), “muito” will change form to agree in gender and number with the noun it’s referring to:
M | F | |
S | muito | muita |
P | muitos | muitas |
Crucially, for mass nouns, we typically use singular forms. For count nouns, we use the plurals. Let’s look at a few examples:
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