One word, moramos, tells you who (we), when (now) and how many, with no help from any other word. English needs “we live” for the same job. That is the idea behind Portuguese verbs: the ending carries the person. Brazilian Portuguese adds a twist, because several persons now share one ending, and this piece shows you how speakers handle that.
The forms look like a wall until you notice that the endings repeat. Learn three small tables and you can build the present tense of hundreds of verbs, including ones you have never met. This piece teaches those tables, the ways Portuguese says “you” and “we”, and gives you a trainer that drills the forms and brings back the ones you miss. Irregular verbs wait for the next piece, so everything here is regular.
Your device has no Portuguese voice, so the play buttons are hidden.
- Who it is for
- English speakers who can already read Portuguese words aloud, or who are happy to learn the sounds alongside this piece.
- After this piece you can
- Conjugate any regular -ar, -er or -ir verb in the present tense; choose between você, tu, o senhor and vocês; use a gente for “we”; and make negatives and questions.
- Comes after
- Portuguese 1: Sounds & Spelling (37/31). You can start here, but the nasal vowels from that piece are in every -am and -em ending you will see.
- Leads to
- Portuguese 3: Ser, Estar, Ter, Ir, Fazer, plus Articles & Contractions (37/33), where the common verbs that break the pattern are sorted into families.
- Honest line
- Knowing the endings is not the same as using them in a live sentence. Expect to be slow at first; the trainer is there to make the forms automatic.
A verb is a stem plus an ending
The form you find in a dictionary is the infinitive, and it ends in -ar, -er or -ir. That ending names the verb’s family. Take it off and what remains is the stem: fal-, com-, abr-. The present tense is the stem plus an ending that depends on who is acting.
| -ar falar | -er comer | -ir abrir | |
|---|---|---|---|
| eu | falo | como | abro |
| tu | falas | comes | abres |
| ele, ela, você, a gente | fala | come | abre |
| nós | falamos | comemos | abrimos |
| vós | falais | comeis | abris |
| eles, elas, vocês | falam | comem | abrem |
Read the table by column and you will see how little there is to learn. The eu form always ends in -o. The -er and -ir families differ only in nós and vós (comemos, abrimos). The rest is a vowel swap: -ar verbs use a (fala, falam); -er and -ir verbs use e (come, comem). The vós row is there for completeness: it survives in old texts, in prayers and in a few regions of northern Portugal, and you will not need to produce it.
Listen to the plural endings: falam ends in a nasal diphthong, like an unstressed -ão, and comem in a nasal “ey”. In both, the stress stays on the stem: FA-lam, CO-mem. These are the 28 regular verbs the trainer uses, so you can start building sentences:
- -ar: falar (speak), trabalhar (work), morar (live), estudar (study), gostar (like), comprar (buy), ajudar (help), cozinhar (cook), viajar (travel), precisar (need), tomar (take, drink), escutar (listen), cantar (sing), olhar (look).
- -er: comer (eat), beber (drink), aprender (learn), vender (sell), correr (run), entender (understand), responder (answer), viver (live).
- -ir: abrir (open), partir (leave), decidir (decide), assistir (watch), dividir (share, divide), permitir (allow).
Two verbs here mean “to live”. Morar is where you live (Moro em Recife); viver is living in a wider sense (Vivo bem), though many speakers use it for both. And two come with a preposition you must not drop: gostar de (Gosto de café, “I like coffee”) and, before a noun, precisar de (Preciso de ajuda).
Who is “you”?
This is where Portuguese varies most, and where the table above hides a surprise. In most of Brazil the everyday word for “you” is você, and it takes the same verb form as ele and ela: você fala. For several people it is vocês, with the eles form: vocês falam. That is why a learner of Brazilian Portuguese can get through most of daily life with four forms: falo, fala, falamos, falam.
Tu takes its own form, tu falas. It is the normal informal “you” in Portugal and is common in parts of Brazil, especially the far South and parts of the North and North-east. In much of Brazilian speech, Rio included, tu is often heard with the você form (tu fala); that is a regional norm, not a mistake. In Portugal, você exists too, but saying it straight to someone can sound distant or even curt, so people often use the person’s name or a title with the third-person form instead.
For politeness, both countries say o senhor and a senhora (“sir”, “madam”) with the third-person form: O senhor precisa de ajuda? Use it with older strangers, officials and customers until they suggest otherwise.
| Where | One person, informal | Polite | Several people |
|---|---|---|---|
| Most of Brazil | você | o senhor, a senhora | vocês |
| Far South, parts of the North and North-east | tu (often with the você form) | o senhor, a senhora | vocês |
| Portugal | tu | o senhor, a senhora, or a name | vocês |
| Angola, Mozambique | tu or você, by region and relationship | o senhor, a senhora | vocês |
No choice is wrong. If you do not know where your Portuguese will be used, learn você and vocês first and recognise tu when you meet it. The trainer below leaves tu off until you switch it on.
“We”: nós and a gente
Portuguese has two words for “we”. Nós takes its own ending: nós falamos. A gente, literally “the people”, takes the ele form: a gente fala. They mean the same, and in everyday Brazilian speech a gente is extremely common; it is heard in Portugal too, more informally. Write nós in a formal letter; say a gente with friends. The trainer will sometimes prompt a gente, to make the link with ele automatic.
Keeping the pronoun
Because the ending shows the person, Portuguese can drop the subject: Moro aqui is a complete sentence. Portugal does this freely. Brazilian speech keeps pronouns more often, and the reason is in the table: when fala can mean he, she, you or we, the pronoun does the work the ending no longer can. A good rule for a learner of Brazilian Portuguese: drop eu and nós when the context is clear; keep você, ele, ela and a gente.
What the present tense covers
The present covers “I speak” and “I do speak”, habits (Trabalho de manhã), and often the near future (Amanhã viajo, “tomorrow I travel”). For something happening right now, Brazil uses estar + gerund (Estou falando) and Portugal estar a + infinitive (Estou a falar); both are standard in their country, and the next piece gives you estar.
To make a negative, put não before the verb: Não falo francês. A question needs only rising intonation: Você fala inglês? There is no helper like “do”. And Portuguese rarely answers with a bare sim: it repeats the verb. Você fala inglês? Falo. Vocês moram aqui? Moramos. A short exchange using nothing but what is on this page:
| —Você trabalha aqui? | Do you work here? |
| —Não, eu estudo aqui. Trabalho numa loja. | No, I study here. I work in a shop. |
| —E onde você mora? | And where do you live? |
| —Moro perto. A gente almoça junto? | I live nearby. Shall we have lunch together? |
Train the forms: the conjugation trainer
A prompt appears, such as nós · comer · to eat, and you type the form. A wrong or revealed form comes back sooner (after about three questions, and again after about nine), and forms you keep getting right come up less and less often. By default it asks eu, the ele form (with ele, ela, você or a gente), nós and the eles form; tu is a switch. Regular present forms carry no accents, but the next piece’s verbs do, so the accent buttons and the strict switch are already here. This piece uses only the 28 regular verbs.
Without JavaScript, use the table above. The pattern to drill: say the forms of one verb aloud, then cover the page and write them.
Common mistakes
- Leaving the infinitive. Eu falar is what a beginner says; the verb has to change: eu falo.
- Mixing the families. -ar verbs take a (fala, falam), -er and -ir verbs take e (come, abrem). Comam is not the present of comer.
- An English plural ending. Falam does not end in an English m. Close the syllable with a nasal glide, as in não.
- Dropping de. Gosto café is wrong: gosto de café. The de also merges with an article: gosto do Brasil, gosto da praia.
- Using você with everyone in Portugal. With a stranger in Lisbon, a name or o senhor is safer. In Brazil, você is the neutral choice and o senhor the respectful one.
- Answering every question with sim. It is not wrong, but repeating the verb (Falo, Moro) is what speakers do.
Your next four days
Ten minutes a day, in this order: review the cards that are due, do the drill, then say two or three sentences aloud.
| Day | Trainer | Say aloud |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10 forms: eu and the ele form only | Three things you do every day. |
| 2 | 10 forms: add nós and the eles form | Three things you and a friend do, once with nós and once with a gente. |
| 3 | 10 forms: all three families mixed | Ask a question with each of three different verbs, and answer by repeating the verb. |
| 4 | 10 forms: add tu if you will need it | Say the forms of morar without looking. |
What sticks
- A verb is a stem plus an ending; the eu form of a regular verb ends in -o, and -er and -ir differ only in nós and vós.
- Você and a gente take the ele form, and vocês the eles form, so Brazilian daily speech needs four forms: falo, fala, falamos, falam.
- Tu has its own form in Portugal and parts of Brazil; many Brazilians say tu with the você form. Vós is for recognising only.
- O senhor and a senhora are the polite you, in both countries.
- Brazil keeps subject pronouns more than Portugal does, because several persons share a form.
- Não goes before the verb, a rising tone makes a question, and the usual yes is the verb itself.
Learn the three small tables, not hundreds of verbs one by one, and learn who says você, tu and a gente. With that, every regular verb you meet arrives already conjugated, and the trainer makes the forms fast enough to use.
Try this: tomorrow, do ten forms in the trainer, then describe your morning in three sentences with regular verbs only. Say one of them again with a gente in place of eu.
Sources. Celso Cunha and Lindley Cintra, Nova Gramática do Português Contemporâneo, on the verb and the forms of address; Ataliba de Castilho, Nova Gramática do Português Brasileiro (2010), on você, a gente and subject pronouns in Brazil. Every verb form here was generated by rules and checked against published conjugation tables.
- 🌐 Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, which has a full conjugation table for each verb
- 📘 John Whitlam and Agripino S. Silveira, Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar: A Practical Guide (Routledge, 3rd edition, 2023)