Participles

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 […]

So, what are nominal forms? They are basically verb forms that play a similar role as nouns, adverbs, and adjectives. Unlike other verb forms, they do not indicate tense, mood, or person on their own. Instead, they depend on context (i.e. the surrounding conjugated verbs) to relay that information. The 3 nominal verb forms in […]

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 […]

In Compound Tenses 1, we focused on in the indicative and conditional moods. Now we’ll cover compound tenses in the , as well as . Don’t worry, the basic formula is still the same 😉: auxiliary verb ter + past participle of the main verb. Quick Overview Here are the forms we’ll cover in this […]

Up until now, we’ve mostly been working with simple tenses, but now it’s time to explore the various compound tenses in Portuguese. This Learning Note is just an introduction to the general concepts — we’ll cover each one in more detail as you progress through the Unit. What Are Compound Tenses? A Portuguese verb form […]

Let’s talk about an important topic: Portuguese auxiliary verbs! In a verb phrase (locução verbal), an auxiliary verb comes before the main verb. Essentially, its job is to “help” the main verb. Most Common Portuguese Auxiliary Verbs Here are a few of the most common , which you will probably recognize: Here are just a […]

Detective Esteves updates Clara on the investigation. Pay special attention to how past participles are used throughout the dialogue.

In this lesson we’re going to tackle past participles in Portuguese, i.e. So what is a past participle? A past participle is a verb form that can… function as an adjective – combine with the past tense of ser to use passive voice – combine with other auxiliary verbs (such as ter) to form different […]

In this lesson, we’ll have a look at . ‘Double’ here means that some verbs can take the form of either a regular or an irregular participle, depending on the auxiliary verb being used with them. Remember those verbs we marked off with an asterisk in the Irregular Participles learning note? They were , , […]

In this lesson, we’ll have a look at in Portuguese, i.e. past participles which behave in a unique and unpredictable way, instead of following the typical rules. Let’s see an example: If you are fresh off the previous lesson, perhaps you expected the past participle of  to follow the rule for -IR verbs, and be […]

In Portuguese, there are three types of past participles: , , and In this lesson, we’ll have a look at regular past participles, that is to say, past participles which behave in a predictable way. These participles depend on the verb’s ending, i.e. they have a specific ending depending on whether they’re the past participle […]