Hmm I think this might be yet another case of colloquialisms. You could most definitely say "O Portugal é lindo" or - in full colloquial fashion - "Vamos pro Po

Hmm I think this might be yet another case of colloquialisms. You could most definitely say "O Portugal é lindo" or - in full colloquial fashion - "Vamos pro Portugal". Even for Timor-Leste, one would still use the masculine article when speaking colloquially, e.g. "Onde é o Timor-Leste?" As for what word is masculine or feminine, yeah, it's pretty arbitrary. The China headline example actually has another wonky case: coin in portuguese (moeda) is feminine, yet "bitcoin" is masculine. Go figure! I somehow picked up the gendering of that word somewhere despite not having set foot in Brazil for about a decade and consuming english media pretty much exclusively for the past two decades. My guess is maybe my brother mentioned it in passing. It's weird how sensitive to learning gendering of new words we portuguese speakers are.