What are the first 210 words to learn in Portuguese?
InputDojo publishes 211 core Portuguese words — the high-frequency vocabulary a beginner meets first, each with its part of speech, pronunciation and its own entry. Portuguese shares most of its core vocabulary with Spanish, so anyone arriving with Spanish will recognise a large part of the first few hundred words on sight. Coming in cold, the vocabulary is straightforward and the pronunciation is the part that takes work.
Key figures
- Core Portuguese words in InputDojo
- 211
- Level
- A1
- Entries with a page of their own
- 211
Our own difficulty estimate. No official beginner list is published for this language.
Why a few hundred words goes further than it sounds
Word frequency is extremely uneven in every language. A small set of function words — articles, pronouns, the handful of verbs meaning to be, to have, to go, to make — accounts for a disproportionate share of everything said, and the first few hundred words of Portuguese are mostly that set. This is why beginners can follow the shape of a conversation well before they can follow its content: the scaffolding is already familiar and only the specifics are missing.
Two standards, and they sound different
Brazilian and European Portuguese share their written vocabulary almost entirely but diverge sharply in speech: European Portuguese reduces unstressed vowels heavily, which makes it markedly harder to follow for a beginner trained on Brazilian audio, and the reverse holds too. The word list is nearly the same either way, but the audio you learn from should match the variety you actually need.
Where a list stops helping
A list tells you which words to meet; it cannot make them stick. Recognition comes from encountering a word in enough different contexts that its meaning arrives without a lookup, and that requires reading and listening to Portuguese rather than reviewing the list again. Treat these 211 words as the set worth front-loading, then move to real material as soon as it is merely difficult rather than impossible.
The pages behind these numbers
Frequently asked questions
How many words do you need for basic Portuguese?
A few hundred core words covers everyday needs, and knowing Spanish reduces that effort considerably.
Should I learn Brazilian or European Portuguese?
Pick by where you are headed. The written language is largely shared; the pronunciation differs enough that listening practice does not transfer cleanly.
Is Portuguese similar to Spanish?
Very. Vocabulary overlap is high and reading transfers well, though Portuguese pronunciation is the harder of the two for most learners.