Forming the Conditional | Portuguese (Brazil) Grammar

The conditional (o futuro do pretérito, as Brazilian grammars call it) is the tense behind English would: I would buy, we would travel, they would say. The good news for learners is that it is one of the easiest Portuguese tenses to build — you do not chop the infinitive apart, you simply add an ending to the whole thing. Master five endings and three irregular stems and you can form the conditional of almost every verb in the language.

The core rule: full infinitive + ending

Unlike the present or the preterite, where you drop the -ar / -er / -ir ending and attach a personal ending to the stem, the conditional keeps the entire infinitive and tacks an ending onto the end of it. The endings are the same for all three verb classes: -ia, -ias, -ia, -íamos, -iam.

Subject	Ending	falar	comer	partir
eu	-ia	falaria	comeria	partiria
tu (regional)	-ias	falarias	comerias	partirias
ele / ela / você	-ia	falaria	comeria	partiria
nós	-íamos	falaríamos	comeríamos	partiríamos
eles / elas / vocês	-iam	falariam	comeriam	partiriam

Notice that the endings never change between -ar, -er, and -ir verbs. This is unusual and very convenient: the present and preterite all have class-specific endings, but the conditional treats every verb identically.

Eu falaria com ele, mas não tenho o número dele.

I would talk to him, but I don't have his number.

A gente comeria fora hoje, só que tá chovendo muito.

We'd eat out today, but it's raining too hard.

Eles partiriam de manhã cedo se conseguissem acordar.

They would leave early in the morning if they managed to wake up.

💡

The accent on -íamos is mandatory and load-bearing. Write falaríamos, comeríamos, partiríamos — never falariamos. The stress falls on that í, and Portuguese marks it with an acute accent. Forgetting it is a spelling error, not a typo.

The "tu" form is mostly regional

The -ias form for tu (falarias, comerias) is fully correct grammar, but in most of Brazil the spoken language has merged the second-person singular into você, which takes the same form as ele / ela. You will hear and use você falaria far more than tu falarias. The tu conditional survives robustly in parts of the South, the Northeast, and in formal or literary writing nationwide.

Você falaria mais devagar, por favor? Não entendi nada.

Would you speak more slowly, please? I didn't understand anything.

Tu comerias tudo isso sozinho? (regional)

Would you eat all that by yourself?

The eu and ele forms are identical

Because both eu and ele / ela / você take -ia, the first- and third-person singular are spelled and pronounced exactly the same: eu falaria = ele falaria. Portuguese normally lets you drop subject pronouns, but in the conditional you often cannot drop them here without creating ambiguity, because the verb alone does not tell you who the subject is.

Eu compraria esse carro, mas ele acharia caro demais.

I would buy that car, but he would think it's too expensive.

In that sentence, dropping both pronouns — compraria esse carro, mas acharia caro demais — would leave the listener unsure who buys and who objects. English has the same issue with would (it never conjugates either), which is why English also keeps its subject pronouns. So this habit transfers naturally: keep the pronoun when the conditional is doing the work.

💡

The conditional is the one tense where you should resist Portuguese's usual pronoun-dropping instinct. Since eu and ele share the form, the pronoun is what carries the meaning.

The three irregular stems — shared with the simple future

Only three verbs are irregular in the conditional, and they are the exact same three that are irregular in the simple future. Instead of using the full infinitive, they use a shortened stem:

Verb	Irregular stem	Conditional
fazer (to do/make)	far-	faria, farias, faria, faríamos, fariam
dizer (to say)	dir-	diria, dirias, diria, diríamos, diriam
trazer (to bring)	trar-	traria, trarias, traria, traríamos, trariam

The logic is purely historical: these stems contracted centuries ago (fazer → far-, dizer → dir-, trazer → trar-), and the contraction got frozen into both the future and the conditional. There is no shortcut that predicts them — you simply memorize the three. But the payoff is large: learn far-, dir-, trar- once and you have unlocked the irregular forms of both the future and the conditional simultaneously.

Eu faria qualquer coisa por essa criança.

I would do anything for this child.

Sinceramente, eu não diria isso na frente dela.

Honestly, I wouldn't say that in front of her.

A gente traria o vinho, mas vocês já têm bastante.

We'd bring the wine, but you already have plenty.

💡

Learn the future and conditional of fazer, dizer, and trazer as a pair: farei / faria, direi / diria, trarei / traria. Same three stems, two tenses, one memorization effort.

Note that compounds of these verbs inherit the irregularity: desfazer → desfaria, contradizer → contradiria, retrazer is rare but would follow traria. The other notorious future/conditional irregulars some learners expect — like pôr or ter — are in fact regular in the conditional: poria (from pôr) and teria (from ter) are built on the full infinitive just like everyone else.

The trap: conditional vs. imperfect of -er / -ir verbs

This is the single most important contrast to drill, because it produces meaning-changing errors. The imperfect tense of -er and -ir verbs also ends in -ia:

	Imperfect (used to / was -ing)	Conditional (would)
comer	eu comia	eu comeria
partir	eu partia	eu partiria
beber	eu bebia	eu beberia
dormir	eu dormia	eu dormiria

The only thing separating comia (imperfect, "I used to eat") from comeria (conditional, "I would eat") is the -r- of the infinitive that the conditional preserves. Drop that r by accident and you have switched tenses. The conditional always contains the full infinitive — so if you can still "see" the infinitive (comer-, partir-, beber-) inside the word, it is conditional.

Quando criança, eu comia arroz com feijão todo dia.

As a child, I used to eat rice and beans every day. (imperfect)

Eu comeria arroz com feijão todo dia se pudesse.

I would eat rice and beans every day if I could. (conditional)

This contrast does not exist for -ar verbs, whose imperfect ends in -ava (falava, not falia), so it never collides with the conditional falaria. The clash is purely an -er / -ir phenomenon — which is exactly why you should practice it with those verbs.

Common Mistakes

❌ Eu comeria → eu comia (meaning 'I would eat')

Incorrect — dropping the -r- turns the conditional into the imperfect.

✅ Eu comeria mais, mas já estou satisfeito.

I'd eat more, but I'm already full.

❌ Nós falariamos com o gerente.

Incorrect — the nós form needs the acute accent: -íamos.

✅ Nós falaríamos com o gerente.

We would speak with the manager.

❌ Eu fazeria isso por você.

Incorrect — fazer is irregular; you cannot use the full infinitive.

✅ Eu faria isso por você.

I would do that for you.

❌ Compraria a casa. (with no pronoun, meaning 'I would buy')

Incorrect/ambiguous — eu and ele share the form, so the pronoun is needed.

✅ Eu compraria a casa.

I would buy the house.

❌ Eles dizeriam a verdade.

Incorrect — dizer uses the irregular stem dir-.

✅ Eles diriam a verdade.

They would tell the truth.

Key Takeaways

Build the conditional by adding -ia, -ias, -ia, -íamos, -iam to the full infinitive — no chopping, same endings for all three verb classes.
The nós form always carries an accent: -íamos.
Only three verbs are irregular — fazer → faria, dizer → diria, trazer → traria — and they are the same three that are irregular in the simple future.
eu and ele / ela / você are identical, so keep the subject pronoun.
Watch the -r-: comeria (would eat) vs. comia (used to eat) differ by one letter.

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