Past Tense

Damiana and Rui chat about what they like to do during different seasons of the year in Portugal. (Recorded in September 2024)

Damiana catches a thief in the office!

In today’s Shorty, we’ll answer the simple question, “What did you do yesterday?”, using the Portuguese simple past tense (pretérito perfeito), as well as the past continuous tense (pretérito imperfeito).

Two customers, Francisca and André, share their conflicting opinions about a new cat café called “O Gatedo”.

During summer festivals in the Algarve, many crowds have been captivated by the music of Humberto Silva, Portuguese singer and accordion player. After interviewing the musician, Lena Strang shares his story with us through this Portuguese adaptation of her article.

A man talks about what he did yesterday and today. Notice how different forms of the past tense are used throughout the story.

Nuno talks to Helena about her sleeping problem.

Rivals Joaquim and Rita catch up and discuss their careers. How many Portuguese-English cognates do you notice throughout their dialogue?

Four punishments in one day?! Note: pôr de castigo basically means to punish (someone). In this Shorty, the phrase takes on a few different meanings given the different contexts (detention, time-out, grounded, etc.).

Martim finds his calling. Verbs practice: irregular Portuguese verbs in the simple past tense (pretérito perfeito).

In Portuguese, when studying narrative texts, we make the distinction between direct and indirect speech. Direct speech is spoken by a character, while indirect speech is spoken by a narrator, in the third-person. Each is clearly defined by different punctuation, but the verb tenses and conjunctions are different too. In real life, everything is technically […]

Sofia and André talk about everything they did yesterday with their friends. Notice how different forms of the past tense are used throughout the dialogue.