Different people may have different expectations to what "learning" a language means exactly. So, at what point would you say (or have you said) "I learned Portuguese"?
Payment must be made until tomorrow and the exam is gonna take place between October 20th and 23rd.
Here you can find previous exams to study: https://www.ufrgs.br/acervocelpebras/acervo/
#Summary
Hey, everyone, had a bit of a hiatus there, but here I am to finish the series with the final tenses you gotta learn to reach fluency level: the tenses of the subjunctive mood.
If you've reached this point, you're able to communicate pretty much everything you want, but you realize sometimes people conjugate a verb in a tense you can't identify, and here and there you say something you realize it's not quite right. This is why you're still missing the subjuntive.
Generally speaking, the subjunctive is employed to express a hypothesis, an uncertainty or a wish. It's also "activated" by certain conjunctions. In the presente, the main one is que, followed by talvez [maybe], embora [although] and caso [if].
> Acredito que ela fale português. = I believe she speaks Portugueses.
> Talvez eu possa ajudar. = Maybe I can help.
The conjugation takes the base form of the eu conjugation in the "regular" presente. The examples below are falar (to speak), escrever (to write) and partir (to leave).
For an example of an irregular-ish verb in the subjunctive:
> Eu vejo. = I see. (presente)
> Talvez eu veja. = Maybe I'll see it. (subjuntivo presente)
> Talvez nós vejamos. = Maybe we'll see it. (subjuntivo presente)
As you can see, the conjugation will follow the base form "vejo".
There are 7 truly irregular verbs in the subjuntivo presente: ser [to be (permanent quality)], estar [to be (temporary state)], haver [there is/are], dar [to give], saber [to know], ir [to go] and querer [to want].
#Subjuntivo Imperfeito (Passado)
You can think of the subjuntivo imperfeito as the past tense of the subjuntive. It's used in the same context as the present, the difference is that it'll be used when the other verb in the sentence is in the indicative past: pretéritos perfeito, imperfeito, mais-que-perfeito or futuro do pretérito.
Especially used with se [if].
> Se você não se irritasse, a gente conversaria. = If you didn't get upset, we'd talk.
The base form is the conjugation of vocês/eles/elas in the pretérito perfeito, minus the -RAM ending. For example:
> Eles fizeram. (pretérito perfeito)
> Talvez eles fizessem. (subjuntivo imperfeito)
There are no irregular verbs in this tense.
#Subjuntivo Futuro
It's used after conjunctions of time to refer to future expected actions: quando [when], enquanto [while/whereas], logo que/assim que [as soon as], depois que [after that], se [if], sempre que [always that], à medida que/conforme [as].
The base form is the conjugation of vocês/eles/elas in the pretérito perfeito, minus the -AM ending. For example:
> Eles fizeram. (pretérito perfeito)
> Quando eu fizer... (subjuntivo futuro)
There are no irregular verbs in this tense.
Beware this is not the same as the infinitivo pessoal. This is very clear if you consider irregular verbs such as ser, estar, fazer etc.
This is it! If you've learned all these tenses, you're on your way to reach C1. Beyond that it's not a matter of learning grammar (although you will need to refresh it here and there), but of practice: reading, writing, listening, speaking.
Bons estudos!
#Summary
At this point you should be able to hold on a full conversation with someone. Even if you don't understand everything they're saying, you're able to: (1) understand the topic and the overall points they're making, (2) understand what someone is asking, (3) ask questions and pick up the information you need, even if you don't understand every single word they're saying.
With the previous tenses, you're able to pretty much communicate anything you want. But you realize you still haven't learned all conjugations and you want to advance. Here we're going to discuss the tenses that may be a bit less common, but you're still going to encounter when hearing Brazilians talk.
You should've learned in A1 already the most common form to refer to the future in BP (with the verb ir). But we do have a proper future conjugation (futuro do presente), which is less common, but you'll still hear it sometimes. You can totally get away not knowing how to conjugate this, but it's important to be able to recognize it.
> Eu falarei com meu namorado.
It's a pretty simple conjugation. You get the infinitive form and add the terminations, it doesn't matter if it's an -AR, -ER or -IR verb, or even if it's irregular!
The examples below are, for regular verbs, falar (to speak), escrever (to write) and partir (to leave). For irregular, ser (to be [permanent]) and ir (to go).
The only exceptions are the verbs fazer (to do/make), dizer (to say) and trazer (to bring). With these, you drop the -ZE-, and conjugate as you would otherwise. (This also happens with their derivatives, such as refazer (to redo/remake) and desfazer (to undo/destroy), etc.)
Refer to Part 2 as to the difference in pronunciation between the vocês/eles/elas conjugation in the futuro do presente and the pretérito perfeito.
#Condicional (Futuro do Pretérito)
The futuro do pretérito allows us to: (1) ask for something politely, (2), talk about a supposition in the future, (3) refer to an action that is dependent on a condition. Beware you should've been made at least aware of the 1st use at initial levels:
> (1) Eu gostaria de um café, por favor. => I would like a coffee please.
> (2) Ele ajudaria você. => He would help you.
> (3) Se chover, nós iríamos embora. => If it rains, we would go away.
See that it's pretty much equivalent to the English "would". This is also true for "could" (poderia/conseguiria) and "should" (deveria).
The conjugation follows the same pattern as the futuro do presente, with its own terminations added to the infinitive form. The 3-verb exception also applies:
Because of phonetic proximity, the pretérito imperfeito is sometimes used with a conditional value. This is more frequent with -er and -ir verbs (because of the phonetic phenomenon), but may happen sometimes with -ar verbs.
Eu podia ir lá. => I could go there.
Se chover, nós íamos embora. => If it rains, we would go away.
#Infinitivo Pessoal
Now this is something that's pretty rare linguistically, and is not shared with other Romance languages (ikr?). Portuguese conjugates the infinitive form, believe it or not. This usually happens in sentences with another verb, to make it clear who the infinitive is referring to. The vocês/eles/elas conjugation is pretty common, whereas the nós one is usually avoided by using a gente.
> É melhor irmos embora. => It's better for us to go away.
> É melhor vocês irem_ embora. => It's better for you folks to go away.
The conjugation is the same for all verbs, no exceptions:
#Passado - Pretérito Mais-que-perfeito (Literário)
This is the final tense of the indicative mood.¹ If you don't care about reading Brazilian literature, you can ignore this one entirely, as no one uses it in speech (instead using the verb ter in the pretérito imperfeito + the second verb in the particípio). It refers to an action in the past previous to another action also in the past.
> Quando você chegou, nós já faláramos com ele. => When you arrived, we had already spoken with him.
Conjugation:
Notice the vocês/eles/elas conjugation is exactly the same as the pretérito perfeito, so it's gonna depend on the context.
That's all for now!
¹ But don't worry, you still gotta learn the subjunctive! 😂😭 Stay tuned for the last part of the series!
Olá! I'm a Brazilian native from Rio, a graduate in Languages (Portuguese and English) from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (3rd highest-ranking federal university in the country), a PhD student in Literary Studies¹, and a private tutor.
I'm always thinking of new ways of helping out my students and one thing I've always wanted to do is to have a regular book club focused on Brazilian literature. Depending on the level of the people interested, we could have 2 tiers: (1) for people who are not yet completely comfortable speaking in Portuguese 100% of the time and (2) for people who are.
The book I have in mind for the moment for the 2nd tier is Jorge Amado's Capitães da Areia. Let me know if you'd like to participate and/or if you have any comments or suggestions to make. 😊
#Summary
Olá, todo mundo! I'm back to talk about the verbs you should learn after you've mastered the different forms of talking about the present (and the most common form of referring to the future).
Here we'll be focusing on the past. As any Romance language, Portuguese has quite a few tenses for the past, so buckle up.
First you want to be able to retell past events. The pretérito perfeito allows you to talk about past actions that have been completely concluded:
> Eu falei com você ontem.
This is how you conjugate regular verbs. The examples are falar (to speak), escrever (to write) and partir (to leave).
Notice the nós conjugation is exactly the same as in the present tense (for regular verbs). You'll know which is which depending on context.
It's a very common mistake to pronounce the vocês/eles/elas conjugation stressing the final syllable. If you do this, it'll sound like you're conjugating the future, which may cause mixups. You're supposed instead to stress the vowel before "-ram": falaram, escreveram, partiram.
Here it gets trickier because I gotta tell you we have another past form. The pretérito imperfeito is used to talk about: (1) something that happened in the past for a certain duration of time, _(2) something that happened repeatedly in the past, (3) something that was happening while something else happened.
> (1) Eu falava português quando eu era criança. => I spoke Portuguese when I was a child.
> (2) Eu falava com a minha avó todos os dias. => I spoke (or I used to speak) to my grandma every day.
> (3) Eu falava com você quando ele chegou. => I was talking to you when he arrived.
Conjugation:
To differentiate perfeito and imperfeito, think of the first as a point in time, and the second as a line.
#Particípio
The particípio is used for compound tenses, similar to the participle in English. For its regular forms, you do as follows: -AR => -ADO ending; -ER and -IR => -IDO ending, such as falado, conhecido, partido...
Now this is where things get a tad complicated. As you've noticed, I mentioned the particípio of conhecer (to know someone/something familiarly), and not of escrever. This is because it's one of the irregular participles: escrito. There are quite a few of those and honestly there's no cheat code to learning them.
The other thing you need to keep in mind is that the particípio varies based on gender and whether it's plural. This happens when the participle acts as an adjective, that is, when it qualifies something/someone. Usually (but not only), this occurs with the verbs ser and estar:
> Eu estou cansada. => cansada (tired) qualifies eu
> Nós somos cansadas! => cansadas qualifies nós
#Passado - Pretérito Mais-que-perfeito Composto
Finally, you want to know how to talk about an action/event in the past prior to another action/event in the past. Fortunately, you don't actually need to learn a whole new tense for this. What you do, in simple terms, is use the verb ter in the imperfeito + particípio of another verb. And good news, this participle does not change forms!
> Quando você chegou, nós já tínhamos falado com ele. => When you arrived, I had already spoken with him.
| Conj. | ter (imperfeito) |
|---|---|
| Eu | tinha |
| Você / Ele / Ela / A gente | tinha |
| Nós | tínhamos |
| Vocês / Eles / Elas | tinham |
There is in fact a proper mais-que-perfeito conjugation, but it's purely literary, so let's leave it aside for now.
Stay tuned for the intermediate-level tenses!
#Summary:
I've started compiling this guide to help out with a question that has been asked a lot lately: What verb tenses should I learn, and in which order?
First of all, it's important to keep in mind that all verbs have three possible endings in the infinitivo: -ar, -er, -ir. (The only "exception" is the irregular pôr.) The ending is gonna define how you conjugate the regular verbs.
#Presente
For fairly obvious reasons, you should start with presente. It's used for current states or facts, or for habitual actions:
> Eu falo português. (fact)
> Eu falo português com meu namorado. (habitual action)
Below is how you conjugate the regular verbs. The examples are falar (to speak), escrever (to write) and partir (to leave).
#Infinitivo
The infinitivo works as a "base form". It's usually employed as a complement of a previous verb. It's a common mistake, for example, to say "Eu quero falo" instead of the correct form below:
> Eu quero falar português.
#Futuro (com o verbo ir)
Good to learn early on so you can make plans with your Brazilian friends, and it's pretty simple as you don't need to learn a new conjugation. You simply use the verb ir (to go) in the present + a complement verb in the infinitive. More or less similar to the English "going to".
> Eu vou falar com meu namorado.
| Conj. | ir (presente) |
|---|---|
| Eu | vou |
| Você / Ele / Ela / A gente | vai |
| Nós | vamos |
| Vocês / Eles / Elas | vão |
Some places and/or books teach this as the "futuro próximo" (near future). I don't know about EP, but there's no such distinction in BP. That's how you're gonna talk about any actions/events in the future.
Also, beware it's possible to use the present to talk about near future events, or events with a specified date:
> Eu falo com meu namorado amanhã.
> Eu termino a universidade ano que vem. = I'll finish university next year.
Finally, there's a proper futuro conjugation, but it's pretty rare in speech and shouldn't be worried about at this point.
#Imperativo
You want to learn the "imperativo" as it's very frequent and you'll want to be able to understand directions, orders, suggestions, and requests. The conjugation is fairly simple, but you gotta know there are two forms of addressing someone directly. This is a leftover from the tu conjugation (which otherwise, with a few local exceptions, dissapeared from BP). (I only explain this so the student doesn't overthink why there are two forms, but it is not important to know which one is the tu or the você form.)
The tu form is more common and can sound "softer". In regular verbs, it's the same form as the presente você/ele/ela/a gente conjugation:
> Você fala com ele. (presente)
> Fala com ele. (imperativo)
The você form sounds a bit more "direct", and is frequently used in formal contexts or to give out orders. It simply swaps the -A and -E endings:
> (falar) Fale com ele.
> (escrever) Escreva para ele.
> (partir) Parta com ele.
Other conjugations:
For Brazilian Portuguese, entirely ignore the negative imperative conjugation. In BP, you simply add the "não" before the verb:
> Não fala com ele.
> Não fale com ele.
#Gerúndio
Equivalent to the -ing in English, used to talk about something happening at the moment (not used to talk about the future, such as in "We are traveling tomorrow"). Luckily this is probably the easiest form out of all of them. You simply: take the infinitive, remove the -R, add -NDO. There are no exceptions, even irregular verbs work the same.
The prototypical sentence employs the verb estar (presente, but it can be used in other tenses) plus the gerúndio:
> Eu estou falando com meu namorado.
| Conj. | estar (presente) |
|---|---|
| Eu | estou |
| Você / Ele / Ela / A gente | está |
| Nós | estamos |
| Vocês / Eles / Elas | estão |
That's all for now, stay tuned for the next parts!
I'm trying to make the ultimate recommendation list for Brazilian TV shows, focusing on popular and/or culturally relevant TV shows which are available internationally and that have closed captions (that is, the subtitles actually match what people are saying in Portuguese). I have not watched most of them, so feel free to comment if you have watched any and would like to share your thoughts!
NETFLIX
| Title | Título | Year | Genre | Seasons | Runtime |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3% | 3% | 2016–2020 | Science fiction | 4 seasons, 33 episodes | 36–74 min |
| Invisible City | Cidade Invisível | 2021–2023 | Fantasy thriller | 2 seasons, 12 episodes | 31–51 min |
| Criminal Code | DNA do Crime | 2023– | Crime drama | 2 seasons, 16 episodes | 47–63 min |
| Rules of Fortune | Os Donos do Jogo | 2025– | Crime drama | 1 season, 8 episodes | 50–62 min |
| Radioactive Emergency | Emergência Radioativa | 2026– | Historical drama | 1 season, 5 episodes | 53–65 min |
| Love Is Blind: Brazil | Casamento às Cegas: Brasil | 2021– | Dating show | 5 seasons, 56 episodes | 27–89 min |
| My Korean Boyfriend | Meu Namorado Coreano | 2026– | Dating/Docu-reality | 1 season, 8 episodes | 25–46 min |
AMAZON PRIME
| Title | Título | Year | Genre | Seasons |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Bandits | Cangaço Novo | 2023– | Crime drama | 2 seasons, 15 episodes |
| Tremembé | Tremembé | 2025 | Crime drama | 5 episodes |
| LOL: Last One Laughing Brazil | LOL: Se Rir, Já Era | 2021– | Stand-up comedy competition | 5 seasons, 30 episodes |
HBO MAX
| Title | Título | Year | Genre | Seasons | Runtime |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ângela Diniz: Murdered and Convicted | Ângela Diniz: Assassinada e Condenada | 2025 | True crime drama | 6 episodes | 39–52 min |
| Astronauta | Astronauta | 2024 | Adult animation | 6 episodes | – |
| Scars of Beauty | Beleza Fatal | 2025– | Telenovela | 1 season, 40 episodes | 47–60 min |
GLOBOPLAY
To be continued...
P.S.: Also feel free to share your thoughts on the table formatting, etc.
The area of PLE evaluation interests me quite a bit, I'm starting the process of becoming an examiner for the Celpe-Bras and it's likely I'll be administering it for the second edition this year.
As such, it got me thinking about the other side: How many of you have taken it, and how was it? If you're planning to take it, what are you worried the most about?
Okay, bear with me. This is something that I've noticed recently. I'll be teaching a student the numbers from 0 to 10 and when I read 5 they'll ask me "oh, so you don't pronounce the -co?", and I'll be like "what? you definitely do pronounce it". Then another day my partner asked me the time for something and I answered "cinco" but apparently it sounded like "sim".
To sum up, it seems I don't fully pronounce the last syllable in "cinco" for some reason, although in my head I'm definitely pronouncing the whole word.
Have you ever noticed you don't fully pronounce a syllable at the end of a word? Or, if you're learning Portuguese, you're expecting to hear the full word and the speaker apparently doesn't pronounce it fully?