Cem or cento, dois or duas

Cem and cento

Cem is exactly a hundred, on its own or straight before a noun:

• cem pessoas - a hundred people
• Ela tem cem anos. - She is a hundred.

The moment another number follows with e, it becomes cento:

Cento also lives on in per cent: dez por cento, ten per cent; cem por cento, a hundred per cent.

Where numbers agree with gender

Um and dois have feminine forms, used with feminine nouns. Every other number up to a hundred stays the same.

The agreement carries on inside bigger numbers, because the last part is still counting the noun:

• vinte e uma casas - twenty-one houses
• trinta e duas pessoas - thirty-two people

123

1. 1uma maçã
2. 2duas maçãs
3. 3três maçãs

Maçã is feminine, so one apple is uma maçã and two are duas maçãs; from três on, the number never changes.

The hundreds from 200 to 900 agree too: duzentos reais, two hundred reais, against duzentas pessoas, two hundred people. Big numbers has the whole set.