Portuguese vs Romanian: 300 Words That Are Nearly Identical

Portuguese vs Romanian: 300 Words That Are Nearly Identical: the list

Tips

• Portuguese nouns ending in -o often lose that vowel in Romanian: tipo/tip, plano/plan, acordo/acord, controlo/control, momento/moment. Spot the pattern once and you can predict many forms before you have studied them.
• Portuguese nouns in -a frequently correspond to Romanian -ă: problema/problemă, mesa/masă, causa/cauză. Note that a vowel or consonant inside the word can shift too, so check the spelling rather than swapping only the ending.
• Infinitives line up by conjugation class: Portuguese -ar matches Romanian -a (tratar/trata, imaginar/imagina), -er matches -e (bater/bate), and -ir matches -i (dormir/dormi).
• Adjectives and nouns ending in a vowel in Portuguese often end in a consonant in Romanian: importante/important, suficiente/suficient, telefone/telefon, sistema/sistem, programa/program.
• Portuguese tends to add an e- before s plus consonant where Romanian does not, as in especial/special — a useful reminder that a one-letter difference can sit at the start of a word, not just the end.
• Close spelling does not mean close sound: sangue and sânge look related but are pronounced quite differently, so keep listening and typing each word rather than only recognising it on the page.

Frequently asked questions

Are Portuguese and Romanian really this similar in general?

Not across the board — the two languages developed apart for many centuries, and grammar and everyday vocabulary diverge a lot. But a meaningful slice of Latin-rooted vocabulary, such as importante/important or sistema/sistem, stayed close enough to recognise at a glance.

Are any of these word pairs false friends?

No — every pair here was selected because the Portuguese and Romanian words carry the same English meaning. Just do not assume the pattern extends automatically to every similar-looking word you meet elsewhere; check the meaning of new lookalikes.

How should I study this list?

In the app you get an English prompt and type the Portuguese word from memory, with accents forgiven so you can focus on the word itself. Spaced repetition then brings each item back around the time you are likely to forget it, which locks the words in far better than reading the list once.

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