O furto e o roubo são crimes.

Because both nouns are being presented as specific categories: theft and robbery as concepts.

In Portuguese, it is very common to repeat the article before each noun in a pair:

• o furto e o roubo

This sounds natural and complete.

If you said:

• furto e roubo são crimes

that can also work, especially in a more general, abstract, or title-like style, but o furto e o roubo is a very normal full sentence structure.

So the repeated o is not unusual—it is standard Portuguese.

This is a very important vocabulary point in Brazilian Portuguese.

• furto = theft, stealing something without violence or direct threat
• roubo = robbery, taking something with violence, force, or threat

So in Brazilian usage, these are not interchangeable.

For example:

• secretly stealing a phone from a table = furto
• taking a phone while threatening someone = roubo

This distinction is much stronger and more precise in Portuguese, especially in legal language.

Because the subject is plural.

The subject is:

• O furto e o roubo

That means furto and roubo together, so there are two things being talked about. A compound subject joined by e normally takes a plural verb.

So:

• é = is
• são = are

That is why the sentence uses:

• O furto e o roubo são crimes.

Because it refers back to a plural subject.

The sentence is saying that both furto and roubo belong to the category of crimes. Since there are two items in the subject, Portuguese uses the plural predicate noun:

• são crimes = are crimes

Using singular here would sound wrong in this sentence.

Because crimes is being used in a general, classificatory way.

Portuguese often omits the article when saying what something is in a broad sense:

• Ele é médico.
• Isso é problema seu.
• Furto e roubo são crimes.

Here, crimes means crimes in general, not a specific set of crimes.

If you added an article, the meaning would shift and sound more specific, for example:

• são os crimes mais comuns = they are the most common crimes

But in the original sentence, no article is needed.

In Portuguese, nouns ending in -e can be either masculine or feminine. The ending alone does not tell you the gender.

So you simply learn the gender with the noun:

• o crime = the crime

Then in the plural:

• os crimes

In the sentence, there is no article before crimes, but the noun itself is still masculine.

Yes, you can, and it is grammatical.

• Furto e roubo são crimes.

This sounds a bit more general, abstract, or like a definition/header.

But:

• O furto e o roubo são crimes.

sounds very natural in ordinary sentence form and emphasizes the two categories as established concepts.

So both are possible, but the version with the articles is especially standard in full prose.

São has a nasal sound, which is often difficult for English speakers.

A rough guide:

• s sounds like s
• ão is a nasal diphthong, something like owng without fully pronouncing the ng

It is not pronounced like:

• sao
• say-oh
• san

It is closer to one syllable: sãw̃

If you know São Paulo, it is the same são.

No, this is normal Portuguese word order:

• Subject + verb + complement

So:

• O furto e o roubo = subject
• são = verb
• crimes = complement

This is the most straightforward way to make a general statement like this.

Yes, structurally that is a very close translation.

But in Portuguese, the sentence may sound slightly more natural and idiomatic than the exact English version, because Portuguese often uses articles with abstract nouns and category nouns more freely than English does.

So while the structure matches well, Portuguese and English do not always use articles in exactly the same way.

Yes. In this sentence, e simply means and:

• o furto e o roubo = theft and robbery

It is the normal coordinating conjunction used to join two nouns.

One pronunciation note: in Brazilian Portuguese, e can sound like ee in many contexts, especially in careful speech.