A news report is one of the clearest windows into journalistic register in Brazilian Portuguese, because it does something everyday speech almost never does: it systematically hides the person who did the action. Where you would casually say a prefeitura registrou alagamentos ("the city government recorded flooding"), the newspaper writes foram registrados alagamentos ("flooding was recorded") — agentless, official, neutral. This page walks through a short original weather-and-transit story to show how the ser-passive, the se-passive, the impersonal third-person plural, the narrative preterite, and reported speech combine to produce that distinctive "this is the news" sound.
The text
An original short report in the style of a Brazilian news site:
Forte chuva atinge São Paulo e causa transtornos no trânsito
Heavy rain hits São Paulo and causes disruption to traffic
Uma forte chuva atingiu a capital paulista na tarde desta segunda-feira (26).
Heavy rain hit the São Paulo state capital on the afternoon of this Monday (the 26th).
Foram registrados pontos de alagamento em pelo menos doze vias da zona sul.
Flooding was recorded in at least twelve roads in the south zone.
Segundo a Defesa Civil, choveu mais de 60 milímetros em apenas duas horas.
According to Civil Defense, more than 60 millimeters of rain fell in just two hours.
Estima-se que cerca de quarenta motoristas tenham ficado presos no trânsito.
It is estimated that around forty drivers got stuck in traffic.
A prefeitura informou que as equipes foram acionadas imediatamente.
The city government reported that the crews were called out immediately.
Várias estações de metrô foram fechadas por precaução.
Several subway stations were closed as a precaution.
Não se registraram feridos até o momento.
No injuries have been recorded so far.
A previsão indica que a chuva deve continuar até quarta-feira.
The forecast indicates that the rain is expected to continue until Wednesday.
As autoridades recomendaram que a população evite áreas alagadas.
The authorities recommended that the public avoid flooded areas.
Read it aloud and notice how rarely a human subject appears as the doer. The rain acts; after that, things "were recorded," "were closed," "got called out" — the people behind those actions melt into the grammar.
The ser-passive: "foram registrados", "foram fechadas"
The ser-passive (passiva analítica) is built exactly like the English passive: a form of ser + the past participle, which agrees in gender and number with the subject. It promotes the thing affected to subject position and lets you drop the agent entirely.
Foram registrados pontos de alagamento.
Flooding spots were recorded. (masculine plural: registrados agrees with pontos)
Várias estações de metrô foram fechadas.
Several subway stations were closed. (feminine plural: fechadas agrees with estações)
The agreement is the part English speakers forget. In English the participle never changes ("were recorded," "were closed"). In Portuguese it behaves like an adjective: registrados (masc. pl.) but fechadas (fem. pl.). Get the gender of the subject wrong and the whole sentence is wrong.
Why does the newspaper love this construction? Because it lets the writer report what happened to the city without committing to who exactly did it. That backgrounding of the agent is the single most reliable marker that separates a news report from a conversation.
The se-passive and impersonal: "estima-se", "não se registraram"
Portuguese has a second, more compact way to background the agent: the se-passive (passiva sintética), formed with the pronoun se plus a verb that agrees with the affected noun.
Não se registraram feridos até o momento.
No injuries have been recorded so far. (registraram is plural to agree with feridos)
Estima-se que cerca de quarenta motoristas tenham ficado presos.
It is estimated that around forty drivers got stuck.
These two look similar but do slightly different jobs. In não se registraram feridos, feridos (injured people) is the grammatical subject and the verb agrees with it in the plural — this is the true se-passive. In estima-se que..., there is no countable thing to agree with; the verb stays locked in the singular estima-se ("one estimates / it is estimated"), introducing a whole clause. That fixed-singular estima-se / acredita-se / calcula-se ("it is estimated / believed / calculated") is the impersonal workhorse of Brazilian reporting.
English has nothing this economical. We reach for the clumsy "it is estimated that" or the vague "they say." Portuguese folds the whole idea into one clitic.
Impersonal third-person plural: a quiet alternative
Brazilian Portuguese also backgrounds the agent with a bare third-person plural verb and no subject pronoun — "they" with no identifiable "they." Compare:
As estações foram fechadas.
The stations were closed. (ser-passive, formal/written)
Fecharam as estações.
They closed the stations. (impersonal 3pl, more neutral/spoken)
The headline-style report prefers the ser-passive because it is more formal and lets the affected thing lead the sentence; the impersonal 3pl is its everyday cousin. Knowing both lets you read the register: foram fechadas signals "official statement," fecharam signals "people are talking."
The narrative preterite: "atingiu", "choveu", "recomendaram"
Every event that actually happened in the report is in the preterite (pretérito perfeito), because each is a completed, bounded fact on a timeline:
Uma forte chuva atingiu a capital paulista.
Heavy rain hit the state capital. (a single completed event)
Choveu mais de 60 milímetros em apenas duas horas.
More than 60 millimeters of rain fell in just two hours.
As autoridades recomendaram que a população evite áreas alagadas.
The authorities recommended that the public avoid flooded areas.
Note choveu: weather verbs like chover (to rain) are impersonal — they have no subject and appear only in the third-person singular. You can never say eu chovo; the rain rains itself. This is the same instinct as English "it rained," except Portuguese drops the "it" entirely.
The last sentence hides a subjunctive: recomendaram que... evite. Verbs of recommending, ordering, and asking trigger the present subjunctive in the subordinate clause, because the recommended action is not yet a fact — it is something the authorities want to become true.
Reported speech and attribution: "segundo", "informou que"
News must say where its facts come from, so it leans on attribution formulas:
Segundo a Defesa Civil, choveu mais de 60 milímetros.
According to Civil Defense, more than 60 millimeters fell.
A prefeitura informou que as equipes foram acionadas.
The city government reported that the crews were called out.
Two patterns to absorb. Segundo + a source ("according to") is a fixed preposition of attribution — note there is no a after it: segundo a prefeitura, never segundo a prefeitura diz. And informar/dizer/afirmar que introduces indirect speech with que, which is obligatory in Portuguese where English can drop "that": you cannot say informou as equipes foram acionadas — the que must be there.
Dates and numbers
Brazilian reports anchor events in time and quantity with their own conventions:
na tarde desta segunda-feira (26)
on the afternoon of this Monday (the 26th)
mais de 60 milímetros / cerca de quarenta motoristas
more than 60 millimeters / around forty drivers
Note desta segunda-feira (de + esta): the contraction is obligatory, and the day-in-parentheses (26) is a standard journalistic shorthand. Approximation is done with cerca de ("around"), mais de ("more than"), pelo menos ("at least") — the hedging vocabulary of careful reporting.
Vocabulary and expressions
- transtornos — disruptions, problems (more formal than problemas).
- alagamento / área alagada — flooding / flooded area.
- via — a road/thoroughfare (journalistic register; everyday speech says rua).
- acionar equipes — to call out / deploy crews (set collocation).
- por precaução — as a precaution.
- até o momento — so far, up to now.
- a previsão indica — the forecast indicates (weather-report formula).
Cultural and register note
Brazilian news writing is markedly more impersonal and passive-heavy than its spoken counterpart, and far more so than English journalism, which since the late twentieth century has pushed toward active, agent-first sentences ("Police closed twelve roads"). A Brazilian reader expects foram fechadas doze vias and would find the blunt active version oddly accusatory or informal. The parenthetical date, the segundo attributions, and the estima-se que hedges are not decoration — they are the conventions that signal objectivity and institutional distance. When you can produce them, your written Portuguese instantly reads as (formal) and journalistic rather than conversational.
Common Mistakes
❌ Foram registrado pontos de alagamento.
Incorrect — the participle must agree: pontos is masculine plural.
✅ Foram registrados pontos de alagamento.
Flooding spots were recorded.
❌ Várias estações foram fechados.
Incorrect — estações is feminine, so the participle is fechadas.
✅ Várias estações foram fechadas.
Several stations were closed.
❌ Estimam-se que quarenta motoristas ficaram presos.
Incorrect — with a 'que' clause and no countable subject, 'se' stays singular.
✅ Estima-se que quarenta motoristas tenham ficado presos.
It is estimated that forty drivers got stuck.
❌ A prefeitura informou as equipes foram acionadas.
Incorrect — 'que' is obligatory before reported speech.
✅ A prefeitura informou que as equipes foram acionadas.
The city government reported that the crews were called out.
❌ Eu chovi muito ontem.
Incorrect — 'chover' is impersonal; it has no personal subject.
✅ Choveu muito ontem.
It rained a lot yesterday.
Key takeaways
- The ser-passive (foram registrados/fechadas) backgrounds the agent; the participle agrees in gender and number.
- The se-passive agrees with a countable subject (não se registraram feridos); impersonal estima-se que stays singular.
- The impersonal 3pl (fecharam as estações) is the spoken cousin of the passive.
- Events are in the preterite; weather verbs like chover are impersonal third-singular only.
- Attribution uses segundo
- source and informar/dizer que
- obligatory que.
- source and informar/dizer que
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Start learning Portuguese→Related Topics
- Passive SentencesB1 — Building passive sentences in Brazilian Portuguese — the ser-passive with 'por', the se-passive for agentless statements, and why everyday speech prefers active recasts.
- Pretérito Perfeito for Completed ActionsA1 — The core use of the Brazilian pretérito perfeito for finished, time-bounded past actions — and why English 'I have done' almost always maps to it, not to 'tenho feito'.
- Impersonal SentencesB1 — Subjectless sentences in Brazilian Portuguese — weather, time, existence, and the se / 3rd-person-plural / a-gente generics, none of which use a dummy 'it'.
- Ser-Passive (Formal Passive Voice)B1 — How to form the analytic passive with ser plus past participle, why the participle agrees with the subject, and why Brazilians rarely use it in speech.
- Se-Passive (Sintética Passive)A2 — The passive with se plus a third-person verb that agrees with the logical object — vende-se, alugam-se — and why Brazilians often skip the agreement.
- Reported (Indirect) Speech: OverviewB1 — How to turn someone's exact words into a report in Brazilian Portuguese — the reporting verbs dizer/falar que and perguntar se, plus the pronoun, time, and place shifts that come with changing perspective.