Standard Conjugation Patterns Summary

This page lays out every regular ending in Brazilian Portuguese in one place. Instead of meeting the endings tense by tense scattered across many pages, you see them side by side here — and the moment you do, the system stops looking like a mountain and starts looking like a handful of repeating patterns. Tabulated this way, the entire regular verb system comes to fewer than 50 distinct endings. Given how many thousands of verbs those endings unlock, that is a remarkably small thing to memorize.

How to read these tables

To conjugate any regular verb, you take the stem (the infinitive minus -ar, -er, or -ir) and add the ending for the person and tense. We use three model verbs throughout:

• falar (to speak) — stem fal- — represents all -ar verbs
• comer (to eat) — stem com- — represents all -er verbs
• partir (to leave) — stem part- — represents all -ir verbs

The person rows reflect Brazilian usage: eu, você/ele/ela (3rd singular), nós, vocês/eles/elas (3rd plural). A tu row is included where it is part of standard agreement. We omit vós, which is archaic in Brazil.

Simple (one-word) indicative tenses

Present (presente)

Preterite (pretérito perfeito) — simple past

Imperfect (pretérito imperfeito) — "used to / was -ing"

Note the accents that the stress requires: the nós forms are falávamos and comíamos / partíamos — never falavamos or comiamos.

Future (futuro do presente)

The future endings attach to the whole infinitive, not the bare stem — they are identical for all three conjugations.

Conditional (futuro do pretérito)

Like the future, the conditional endings attach to the full infinitive and are the same for all three conjugations.

Subjunctive tenses

Present subjunctive (presente do subjuntivo)

The hallmark of the subjunctive is the "opposite vowel": -ar verbs switch to e-endings, while -er/-ir verbs switch to a-endings.

Imperfect subjunctive (imperfeito do subjuntivo)

These all end in -sse and share endings across the conjugations; the linking vowel differs (-a-, -e-, -i-).

Mind the accents on the nós forms: falássemos, comêssemos, partíssemos.

Future subjunctive (futuro do subjuntivo)

Portuguese keeps a living future subjunctive — used after se, quando, enquanto, assim que, etc., to talk about future contingencies. For regular verbs it looks identical to the personal infinitive (see below), but they are distinct categories.

Imperative (imperativo)

The imperative in Brazil is built off the subjunctive. In practice, the everyday você command for -ar verbs uses the bare -a form, and for -er/-ir verbs the -e form; the negative always uses the present subjunctive.

In casual Brazilian speech the affirmative command typically uses the plain indicative-looking form (fala!, come!, parte!), while formal/written commands use the subjunctive form (fale, coma, parta).

Non-finite forms

Personal infinitive (infinitivo pessoal)

Unique to Portuguese among major Romance languages, the personal infinitive carries person endings. For regular verbs it is identical in form to the future subjunctive, but it is used differently (typically after prepositions, with explicit or implied subjects).

The big picture: why it's only ~50 endings

Tabulated above, the whole regular system reuses the same small inventory of endings, and the patterns rhyme:

• -er and -ir are nearly identical, so you effectively learn two ending sets, not three.
• Future and conditional attach to the full infinitive and are the same for all conjugations — one set covers everything.
• Future subjunctive and personal infinitive are identical in form for regular verbs — learn one, get both.
• The present subjunctive is just the "opposite vowel" flip of the present indicative.

So the apparent wall of forms collapses into a handful of moves you reuse over and over. That is the productivity payoff: a small, fixed set of endings generating the conjugation of thousands of verbs.

How this differs from English

English regular verbs have essentially one added ending in the past (-ed) and one in the present (-s for he/she/it). Portuguese instead packs person, number, tense, and mood into the ending, which is why a single Portuguese verb has dozens of forms while an English verb has four or five. The upside is that Portuguese often needs no subject pronoun (falo already means "I speak") and no auxiliary for the simple past, where English needs "did." The endings are doing the work that English spreads across separate little words.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• The whole regular system fits in a few tables and reduces to fewer than 50 distinct endings.
• -er and -ir verbs share most endings; future and conditional use one cross-conjugation set on the full infinitive.
• The present subjunctive is the "opposite-vowel" flip of the present indicative.
• Future subjunctive and personal infinitive look identical for regular verbs.
• Watch the accents on nós imperfect/subjunctive forms (falávamos, comíamos, comêssemos) — they are not optional.