Aprender

Aprender means to learn. It is a clean, regular -er verb, which makes it an excellent model for the second of Portuguese's three verb classes. The one piece of grammar you must internalize is the construction aprender a + infinitive — "to learn to do something." That little a is obligatory and is the mirror image of ensinar a ("to teach to"). English drops any preposition before the infinitive ("learn to drive"), so this a is easy to forget.

The model -er verb

Drop the -er to get the stem aprend-, then add the -er endings: -o, -es, -e, -emos, -em. Note how these differ from the -ar endings (-o, -as, -a, -amos, -am): the difference is the theme vowel, e instead of a, in every form except eu. Compare with the -ar verbs and -er verbs.

aprender a + infinitive — the must-know construction

To say you learned to do something, BR requires a before the infinitive.

The complement of ensinar ("to teach") takes the same a, so the pair is symmetrical: Ele me ensinou a nadar / Eu aprendi a nadar ("He taught me to swim" / "I learned to swim"). When the thing learned is a noun rather than an action, no preposition is needed: Aprendi inglês na escola ("I learned English at school").

Why does the a appear before the verb but vanish before the noun? Portuguese uses a here as a bridge marking the infinitive as a goal — the thing you worked toward acquiring. A noun like inglês is already a direct object, so it needs no bridge. The same logic governs começar a ("begin to"), passar a ("come to"), and other verbs that point toward an action; once you see a as "the marker before a goal-infinitive," you can predict it instead of memorizing it verb by verb.

Indicative tenses

Presente do indicativo

Pretérito perfeito

As with -ar verbs, the nós form aprendemos is the same in present and preterite — context tells you which.

Pretérito imperfeito

The -er and -ir imperfect endings are -ia, -ias, -ia, -íamos, -iam (different from the -ar imperfect in -ava). Note the acute on aprendíamos.

Futuro do presente

In conversation BR uses vou aprender rather than this synthetic future.

Futuro do pretérito (conditional)

Subjunctive

Presente do subjuntivo

Note the vowel flip: an -er verb takes -a endings in the present subjunctive (the opposite of its indicative -e). This is the regular pattern across all -er/-ir verbs.

Imperfeito do subjuntivo

The nós form aprendêssemos takes a circumflex (not an acute) — the stressed e is closed. This is a common spelling slip.

Futuro do subjuntivo

Imperative

Non-finite forms

The personal infinitive aprenderem marks the plural subject — a structure English lacks, where you would just say "see you all learning."

Common Mistakes