Existential Sentences | Portuguese (Brazil) Grammar

An existential sentence does one job: it announces that something exists or is present, putting a brand-new entity onto the table for the conversation. In English this is the "there is / there are" pattern — "There's a party tonight," "There were two people waiting." Brazilian Portuguese builds these sentences very differently from English, and the difference reveals something deep about how the language packages new information. This page focuses on the sentence type — what existential sentences do and how they are structured — while the companion page on tem / há drills the verb forms in detail.

What an existential sentence is for

The defining feature of an existential sentence is that it introduces a new referent into the discourse. You are not saying anything about a known thing; you are putting a new thing into existence for the listener. Compare:

A festa é hoje. — "The party is today." (You both already know about the party; this says when it is.)
Tem uma festa hoje. — "There's a party today." (You're telling the listener a party exists at all.)

The first is an ordinary statement about a known subject. The second is existential: it brings uma festa — new, indefinite — into the conversation. This is why existential sentences almost always contain an indefinite noun (uma festa, um cara, duas pessoas), not a definite one. Saying Tem a festa hoje sounds odd precisely because a festa is already known, defeating the purpose of an existential.

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Existentials are for new, indefinite things. If the listener already knows the thing exists, you don't need an existential — you use an ordinary sentence about it. This is why "There's the party" feels wrong in both languages.

The entity comes after the verb

Here is the structural heart of the matter. In a normal Brazilian sentence the subject comes first: O cachorro late (the dog barks). But in an existential sentence, the new entity comes after the verb:

(location/time) + verb + new entity

Tem uma festa hoje na casa do João.

There's a party today at João's place.

Tem um cara aqui que fala cinco línguas.

There's a guy here who speaks five languages.

Atrás da escola tem uma quadra de futebol.

Behind the school there's a soccer field.

The new entity (uma festa, um cara, uma quadra) never sits in the usual front-of-sentence subject slot. This post-verbal placement is the universal signal of "new information arriving" — it mirrors why English bolts on the dummy word there to delay the real subject ("There's a guy..." rather than "A guy is..."). Both languages refuse to lead with brand-new indefinite material; Portuguese just does it by word order plus an impersonal verb, with no dummy subject at all.

The three existential verbs

Brazilian Portuguese has three ways to fill the verb slot, and they differ sharply in register.

tem — the everyday default (informal)

In spoken Brazilian Portuguese, the overwhelming default is tem. It is impersonal and invariable: it stays tem whether the entity is singular or plural. This surprises learners who know ter as "to have," but here it has drifted into a pure existential.

Tem leite na geladeira?

Is there milk in the fridge?

Tem três pessoas esperando lá fora.

There are three people waiting outside.

Note tem três pessoas, not têm — even with a plural entity, existential tem does not change. (The accented têm belongs to the ordinary verb "they have.")

há — the formal/written option

In writing and formal speech, há (from haver) is the standard existential. It is also impersonal and invariable, and it sounds noticeably more (formal) than tem.

Há uma longa fila no banco hoje.

There's a long line at the bank today. (formal)

Não há motivo para preocupação.

There's no reason to worry. (formal)

existe(m) — exists, and it agrees

The third option, existir, leans toward "there exists" and, unlike the other two, it agrees in number with the entity — because here the entity is treated as a genuine grammatical subject:

Existe um problema com o sistema.

There's a problem with the system.

Existem várias maneiras de resolver isso.

There are several ways to solve this.

Verb	Register	Agrees with entity?	Example
tem	everyday/informal	No — always tem	Tem dois cachorros no quintal.
há	formal/written	No — always há	Há dois cachorros no quintal.
existe(m)	neutral/formal	Yes	Existem dois cachorros no quintal.

Negative existentials

To negate, put não before the verb. The entity is typically a negative word like nada, ninguém, or nenhum:

Não tem nada na geladeira, preciso fazer compras.

There's nothing in the fridge, I need to go shopping.

Não tem ninguém na sala.

There's nobody in the room.

Não há nenhuma garantia de que vai dar certo.

There's no guarantee it'll work out. (formal)

Questions

To ask "is there...?", you simply use the existential verb with rising intonation — no auxiliary, no inversion:

Tem leite?

Is there any milk?

Tem vaga no estacionamento?

Is there a spot in the parking lot?

Past and future

Because the verb carries tense, you shift it like any verb. In the past, the everyday spoken form is tinha, while the formal written form is the famously tricky houve / havia:

Ontem tinha muita gente na praia.

Yesterday there were a lot of people at the beach.

Houve um acidente na rodovia esta manhã.

There was an accident on the highway this morning. (formal)

Amanhã vai ter reunião às nove.

Tomorrow there's going to be a meeting at nine.

Note that future existential is usually vai ter (informal) or haverá (formal).

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Existential tem and possessive ter look identical but behave differently: possessive ter has a subject and can be plural (Eles têm dois carros — "they have two cars"), while existential tem has no subject and never pluralizes (Tem dois carros na garagem — "there are two cars in the garage"). The presence of a subject is the giveaway.

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The verb in an existential is impersonal — it has no real subject, so with tem and há it never takes a plural ending. Only existir agrees, because it alone treats the entity as a true subject. When in doubt in speech, reach for invariable tem.

Common Mistakes

❌ Têm muitas pessoas na festa.

Incorrect — existential 'tem' is invariable; the accented 'têm' is the verb 'they have'

✅ Tem muitas pessoas na festa.

There are a lot of people at the party.

Existential tem never becomes têm, even with a plural entity. The plural têm means "they have."

❌ Aqui é uma festa hoje.

Incorrect — calques English 'there is' with 'é'

✅ Aqui tem uma festa hoje.

There's a party here today.

Don't translate "there is" with é (to be). Existence uses tem / há / existe, not ser.

❌ Uma festa tem hoje.

Unnatural — the new entity should follow the verb

✅ Tem uma festa hoje.

There's a party today.

The new entity comes after the existential verb. Leading with it breaks the information structure.

❌ Existe muitas razões para isso.

Incorrect — 'existir' must agree with the plural entity

✅ Existem muitas razões para isso.

There are many reasons for that.

Unlike tem and há, existir agrees in number: plural entity → existem.

❌ Há de pessoas no parque.

Incorrect — no preposition before the entity

✅ Há pessoas no parque.

There are people in the park. (formal)

The existential verb takes the entity directly, with no linking preposition.

Key Takeaways

Existential sentences introduce a new, indefinite entity into the discourse.
The entity comes after the verb — never in the front subject slot.
tem = everyday/informal and invariable; há = formal/written and invariable; existe(m) = agrees in number.
Negate with não
- verb + nada/ninguém/nenhum; ask with rising intonation (Tem leite?).
Tense lives in the verb: tinha / houve (past), vai ter / haverá (future).

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