Portuguese in Six Weeks

Week 2 – Day 5

Regular verbs

Faça a revisão do dia anterior!

You can download this lesson here

You can watch the video here.

There are three verb conjugation structures for regular verbs. The conjugation structures are defined as follows:
1st conjugation for verbs ending in –ar.
2nd conjugation for verbs ending in –er.
3rd conjugation for verbs ending in –ir.

In this lesson we are going to focus on the 1st conjugation, the –ar verb. Don’t panic this is not as hard as it seems!
Regular verbs are not that complicated in Portuguese, especially the ones ending in -ar. If we observe the tables below we can see that verbs are following a pattern. This has been underlined to demonstrate it more clearly.

The verb falar – to speak

Audio 1

The verb morar – to live / to reside

If we take a look at these verbs in English we can see that they also follow a pattern! The verbs for he/ she & it – are ending in ‘s’ but in the other conjugations are not.

he speaks / she speaks

he lives / she lives

It speaks!

It lives in the cupboard 

Most verbs in English will follow this pattern when referring to he / she / it (except for irregular verbs like – to be)

So if we observe the verbs in the table below, we can see that the regular Portuguese verbs, all change in the same way. They all follow the same pattern or formula. The change we have made is in bold. The bold is NOT where we stress the word.

Listen and repeat.

Audio 2

We have simply taken off the ending ‘-ar’ and replaced it with the following verb ending (in bold).

Personal Pronouns

So what are personal pronouns? These are the words we use to replace the names of the people, or person, we are talking to or about, (e.g. I, you, he, she ) Here is a short list in Portuguese

Audio 3

Audio 4 – Phrases

Eu – is for I, we use this for referring to ourselves. It is not written with a capital letter like the English ‘I’. We can also drop the eu as the verb ending; -o, is only used for -eu.

Eu moro em Lisboa – I live in Lisbon

or

Moro em Lisboa – I live in Lisbon ( This is pretty cool as it is one less word to say!)

Tu – is the familiar (fam.) form of ‘you‘ used for addressing those that we are in close relationships with, friends etc…but it is always good to learn it as most verb lists online will have it and you need to know what it means. We can also omit the pronoun; –tu

Tu moras em Faro – you live in Faro (fam.)

or

Moras em Faro – you live in Faro (fam.)

Você – is better for the learner to use, although we rarely say the pronoun itself, we use the form of the verb, which follows the same pattern as ele – he and ela – she. Você is formal (form.).

você mora – you live (formal)

ela mora – she lives

ele mora – he lives

All of the above use ‘mora‘ and only the personal pronoun changes, depending on who we are talking to or about.

Nós – we can drop the pronoun here too and just use the verb. (like with tu and eu)

Nós moramos em Portugal – we live in Portugal

or

Moramos em Portugal – we live in Portugal

Eles – they. This can be a group of men or a mixed group containing both men and women.

Eles são amigos – they are friends

Elas – they.  This is only for a group of women. 

Elas são médicas – they are doctors

The good news is that these changes will apply to all regular -ar verbs! So once you learn one you have learned them all!

Verb Marathon!!

Audio 5

Morar;  to live, to reside – morada= address

eu moro; tu moras; ele mora; nós moramos; eles moram

Comprar; to buy, to purchase

eu compro; tu compras; ele compra; nós compramos; eles compram

Usar – to use (U = oo)

eu uso; tu usas; ele usa; nós usamos; eles usam

Falar – to speak 

eu falo; tu falas; ele fala; nós falamos; eles falam

Pagar – to pay

eu pago; tu pagas; ele paga; nós pagamos; eles pagam

Jantar – to have dinner

eu janto; tu jantas; ele janta; nós jantamos; eles jantam

Trabalhar – to work

eu trabalho; tu trabalhas; ele trabalha, nós trabalhamos; eles trabalham

Lavar – to wash

eu lavo; to lavas; ele lava; nós lavamos; eles lavam

Apanhar – to catch

eu apanho; tu apanhas; ele apanha; nós apanhamos; eles apanham

Fechar – to close 

eu fecho; tu fechas; ele fecha; nós fechamos; eles fecham

In a  negative phrase: She doesn’t work – for example, we place the ‘não‘ before the verb:

Ela não trabalha – she doesn’t work

Eu não falo português – I don’t speak Portuguese

Nós não jantamos às 19h – we don’t eat at 7pm

No verb of the day today! That is enough verbs for one day!!!

Tip of the Day

If you learn even just one of these verbs, off by heart, you will then be able to conjugate the rest of them if you use the formula.

Chega por hoje – amanhã há mais

Até amanhã!