Describing your daily routine is the classic A1 exercise, and for good reason: it forces you to chain habitual present-tense actions together with time expressions, which is the backbone of basic description. This text (informal) walks through a typical weekday and lets us examine how BR marks clock times, how it handles "to catch the bus", and a quirk of reflexive verbs that trips up learners coming from Spanish or French.
The text
Acordo às sete da manhã. Tomo café da manhã com pão e café. Saio de casa às oito e pego o ônibus para o trabalho. Almoço ao meio-dia. Volto para casa às seis. À noite, janto com a minha família.
Read it through for gist first.
Acordo às sete da manhã.
I wake up at seven in the morning.
Tomo café da manhã com pão e café.
I have breakfast with bread and coffee.
Saio de casa às oito e pego o ônibus para o trabalho.
I leave home at eight and catch the bus to work.
Almoço ao meio-dia.
I have lunch at noon.
Volto para casa às seis.
I come home at six.
À noite, janto com a minha família.
In the evening, I have dinner with my family.
Grammar in action
Present indicative for habitual actions
Every verb here — acordo, tomo, saio, pego, almoço, volto, janto — is in the present indicative, first-person singular, with the subject eu dropped. This is the tense of habit and routine: things you do every day. See the present indicative overview.
Todo dia eu acordo às sete.
Every day I wake up at seven.
English has a separate "habitual present" feel ("I wake up", not "I am waking up"), and BR matches it: the simple present, never the gerund, expresses routine. Note also that the BR present indicative does not need an auxiliary "do" — there is no equivalent of English "I do wake up". The verb stands alone.
"Acordo", not "me acordo" — reflexive-dropping
Here is a subtle but important point. The verb acordar ("to wake up") is not reflexive in standard BR: you say acordo, not me acordo. This surprises learners arriving from Spanish (me despierto) or French (je me réveille), where the equivalent verb is reflexive. See acordar.
Acordo cedo durante a semana.
I wake up early during the week.
BR does have reflexive verbs (levantar-se "to get up" can take se), but acordar in the "wake up" sense normally does not. Do not import the Spanish reflexive habit. Even levantar is very often used without se in colloquial BR: levanto às sete is perfectly natural.
"Às sete" — telling time with the contraction A + AS
Clock times use the preposition a contracted with the feminine article as (because horas, "hours", is feminine and understood): a + as → às. So "at seven" is às sete (i.e., às sete horas). See contractions with a.
Saio de casa às oito.
I leave home at eight.
The grave accent on às is not decorative — it marks the a + as contraction (called crase) and is required. Writing as sete without the accent is a spelling error. Two special times break the às pattern: noon is ao meio-dia (a + o meio-dia, masculine), and midnight is à meia-noite. One o'clock, being singular, takes the singular article: à uma hora.
Almoço ao meio-dia e janto às oito.
I have lunch at noon and dinner at eight.
"Da manhã", "ao meio-dia", "à noite" — parts of the day
BR divides the day into manhã (morning), tarde (afternoon), and noite (evening/night). To pin a clock time to a part of the day, use da: às sete da manhã ("seven in the morning"). To say "in the morning / afternoon / evening" as a general time frame, BR uses de or à: de manhã, de tarde, à noite. See adverbs of time.
À noite, janto com a minha família.
In the evening, I have dinner with my family.
Note à noite again carries the grave accent (a + a noite). These time adverbials — de manhã, à tarde, à noite — are everyday building blocks and worth memorizing as fixed units.
"Tomo café da manhã" — TOMAR for meals and drinks, and a vocabulary trap
Café da manhã literally means "morning coffee" but is the standard BR word for breakfast. (European Portuguese says pequeno-almoço — a true regional difference worth knowing.) The verb is tomar: tomar café da manhã ("to have breakfast"). Tomar covers ingesting drinks and, idiomatically, breakfast. See tomar.
Tomo café da manhã com pão e café.
I have breakfast with bread and coffee.
Watch the double appearance of café: the first café da manhã is "breakfast"; the final café is literally "coffee" the drink. Same word, two senses, both in one sentence — exactly the kind of overlap a rule page cannot show you.
"Pego o ônibus" — PEGAR for catching transport
To "catch" or "take" a bus, train, or taxi, BR uses pegar: pegar o ônibus. The verb pegar broadly means "to grab/take", and it is the natural choice for public transport. Ônibus ("bus") is invariable — singular and plural look identical (o ônibus, os ônibus), distinguished only by the article.
Pego o ônibus para o trabalho todo dia.
I catch the bus to work every day.
Do not use tomar here as a calque of "take the bus" — while understood, pegar o ônibus is overwhelmingly the colloquial BR norm. ("To work" is para o trabalho; in fast speech para often reduces to pra: pro trabalho.)
"Saio de casa" and "volto para casa" — bare "casa" with no article
"To leave home" is sair de casa; "to come home" is voltar para casa. Notice there is no article before casa in these fixed motion expressions — de casa, para casa, em casa — when "casa" means "home" generically. This parallels English "go home" (no "the"). Sair and voltar are irregular and stem-changing; saio is the first-person form of the irregular sair.
Saio de casa cedo e volto para casa tarde.
I leave home early and come home late.
Vocabulary and expressions
- acordar — to wake up (not reflexive in BR)
- tomar café da manhã — to have breakfast
- café da manhã (BR) / pequeno-almoço (PT-PT) — breakfast
- sair de casa — to leave home
- pegar o ônibus — to catch the bus
- almoçar — to have lunch; almoço (noun) — lunch
- ao meio-dia — at noon
- voltar para casa — to come home
- à noite — in the evening / at night
- jantar — to have dinner; (o) jantar — dinner
Cultural note
The Brazilian café da manhã is typically simple on weekdays — pão (often a pão francês, the small crusty roll), butter, fruit, and of course café, usually a strong, sweet cafezinho. Almoço at midday is traditionally the largest meal, frequently rice and beans (arroz e feijão) with meat and salad, while dinner is lighter. The ônibus is the workhorse of urban transport in most Brazilian cities, so pegar o ônibus is a phrase you will use and hear constantly.
Common Mistakes
❌ Me acordo às sete.
Incorrect — making 'acordar' reflexive on the Spanish/French model.
✅ Acordo às sete.
I wake up at seven. ('Acordar' is not reflexive in BR.)
❌ Saio de casa as oito.
Incorrect — missing the grave accent on the time contraction 'às'.
✅ Saio de casa às oito.
I leave home at eight. ('a' + 'as' = 'às'.)
❌ Almoço a meio-dia.
Incorrect — noon is masculine, so it contracts to 'ao', not 'à'.
✅ Almoço ao meio-dia.
I have lunch at noon.
❌ Tomo o ônibus para o trabalho.
Incorrect — calquing 'take the bus'; BR uses 'pegar'.
✅ Pego o ônibus para o trabalho.
I catch the bus to work.
❌ Volto para a casa às seis.
Incorrect — inserting an article before 'casa' in the 'home' sense.
✅ Volto para casa às seis.
I come home at six.
Now practice Portuguese
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Portuguese→Related Topics
- Present Indicative OverviewA1 — What the Brazilian Portuguese present indicative covers — and why it does the work English splits between simple and progressive.
- AcordarA1 — Full conjugation and usage of acordar (to wake up), a regular -ar verb that Brazilians use without 'se'.
- TomarA1 — How to conjugate and use tomar in Brazilian Portuguese — a regular -ar verb that is the everyday word for drinking beverages, taking medicine, taking transport, taking a shower, and making decisions.
- Adverbs of TimeA1 — The core Brazilian Portuguese time adverbs — hoje, ontem, amanhã, agora, já, ainda, sempre, nunca, jamais — including the tricky já (already/right now) and ainda (still/yet).
- Contractions with 'A' (The Crase)A2 — The 'a' contractions (ao, aos) and the crase (à) in Brazilian Portuguese — what the accent really means, the reliable substitution test, when crase is required, and the most common crase errors.
- Annotated Texts: OverviewA1 — An introduction to the Annotated Texts section: short authentic Brazilian Portuguese texts at every CEFR level, broken down with grammar commentary that links back to the rest of the guide.