Inteligente: A Word You Already Know

The word inteligente is a friendly face for English speakers.

It means intelligent, is spelled nearly the same, and has the same Latin root, intelligere, meaning “to understand” or “perceive.”

🧠 How It’s Used

Just like in English, inteligente is used for people, animals, even systems or choices:

• Ela é muito inteligente. → She is very intelligent.
• É uma decisão inteligente. → It’s a smart decision.
• Os golfinhos são animais inteligentes. → Dolphins are intelligent animals.

🗣️ Pronunciation Tip

In English, we stress the second syllable: in-tel-li-gent.

In Portuguese, it’s een-tuh-lee-ZHEN-tuh.

That -gente ending is the tricky bit. It’s pronounced “ZHEN-tuh”, soft, with the typical European Portuguese zh sound (like the 's' in 'measure').

🎧 Listen to it here on Infopedia

🧭 Final Thought

Words like inteligente remind us that English and Portuguese share deep roots.

And recognising a word in a sentence is a small but powerful confidence boost when you’re listening or reading in real time.