Verbs

Two friends and colleagues, Sara and Joana, discuss the challenges they face when organizing a health conference.

Think back to the early days of learning Portuguese… When you started talking about simple likes and dislikes, you probably paused at phrases like and wondered what that was doing there. This was your first encounter with regência (regency), a grammatical principle which relates to how words depend on others to complete their meaning. In […]

What’s wrong with Rita? Find out as you explore how the verb andar is used in context.

The first compound tense we’re going to talk about is the pretérito perfeito composto do indicativo. To keep it short, and since the focus of this unit will just be the indicativo mood, we’ll just call it pretérito perfeito composto. So let’s get to it! As you are likely aware, the pretérito perfeito (simple past […]

Let’s talk about the compound form of modo condicional (conditional mood), which is the mood used for certain hypothetical situations and possibilities. If you need a refresher on the simple form first, check out this Unit, or here are a couple examples to jog your memory: Now, the compound form of the conditional can indicate a […]

Now we’ll turn our attention to the futuro composto do indicativo! (Let’s call it futuro composto for short) As you’re aware, an action in the futuro simples (simple future tense) takes place after the time the utterance is spoken and isn’t related to any other actions. In the futuro composto, however, the future action represented […]

In the Simple Past 2 unit we practiced with some of the most common irregular Portuguese verbs in the simple past (pretérito perfeito do indicativo): ir, ser, estar, dar, and querer.  Now let’s continue with a few more!

Join Diogo and Sandra in a silly conversation about money troubles and relationship drama. Along the way, take note of how the verb “andar” is used in context.

The pretérito mais-que-perfeito do indicativo is the tense used to indicate an event that took place in the past before another event. As the name suggests, it’s beyond (“more than”) the pretérito perfeito tense. Unlike with pretérito perfeito, the pretérito mais-que-perfeito’s simple and compound forms both have the same meaning. The compound form we’re going […]

Manuel offers to help his neighbour with some yard work. This Shorty includes the personal pronoun vós (another pronoun for “you”) and conjugation of verbs in that form. We don’t use vós in most of our content, or in the Verbs section, because it has fallen out of use nowadays, except in specific regions and […]

Pedro is shocked when he returns home to find the aftermath of Sofia’s wild house party. Notice how the verb ficar is used in different ways throughout the dialogue.

José and Diogo watch the game together. Keep an eye (or ear) out for irregular verbs in the present tense, such as ter, poder, querer, and ir, plus many common conversational phrases.