Imperfeito of Ter, Vir, and Pôr

The imperfect (imperfeito) is famously regular in Portuguese — almost every verb takes the same predictable endings. Only four verbs break the pattern, and three of them break it in exactly the same way: ter, vir, and pôr all grow an extra -nh- in their imperfect stem. (The fourth is ser, which is irregular in a completely different way — see the imperfect of ser.) Once you see the shared pattern here, all three verbs come for free.

The shared pattern: an -nh- that appears from nowhere

In the imperfect, the stems of these verbs are tinh-, vinh-, and punh-. That -nh- sound (the Portuguese equivalent of Spanish ñ or the English ny in "canyon") is not present in the infinitives ter, vir, or pôr, and — this is the key insight — it does not appear in any of their other past tenses either. In the preterite (pretérito perfeito) these same verbs become teve, veio, and pôs: no -nh- anywhere. The nasal stem is a quirk that lives only in the imperfect.

After the irregular stem, the endings are perfectly predictable — -a, -as, -a, -amos, -am (so tinha, tinhas, tinha, tínhamos, tinham). They look like the regular -er/-ir set (-ia, -íamos, -iam) with the -i- swallowed up by the -nh-: think of it as the -nh- stem already carrying that vowel, so you do not add a second one (tinha, never tinhia).

Ter — to have (had)

Note the acute accent on tínhamos — the nós form is stressed on the í, and that stress must be written. Leaving the accent off (tinhamos) is a spelling error, not a stylistic choice.

Ter in the imperfect is also the everyday auxiliary for the past perfect (mais-que-perfeito composto): tinha + past participle = "had done." This is by far the most common compound past in spoken Brazilian Portuguese.

For the full treatment of this construction, see the mais-que-perfeito composto.

Vir — to come (came / was coming)

Again, watch the accent: vínhamos, not vinhamos. Vir in the imperfect typically describes a repeated or habitual coming in the past, or a coming that was in progress when something else happened.

Be careful not to confuse this with ver (to see), whose imperfect is the regular via, víamos — no -nh-. The two are easy to mix up because vir and ver look so similar in the infinitive.

Pôr — to put (put / was putting)

Pôr keeps its circumflex in the infinitive (to distinguish it from the preposition por, "by/for"), but the conjugated forms lose it: punha, púnhamos. The nós form carries an acute accent on the ú — púnhamos. All of pôr's common compounds (compor, dispor, supor, propor) follow the identical pattern: compunha, dispunha, supunha, propunha.

Why only the imperfect? A note on where the -nh- comes from

It feels arbitrary that the nasal stem shows up here and nowhere else, but there is a historical reason worth knowing. These verbs descend from Latin forms (tenēbam, veniēbam, ponēbam) whose stems contained an n that, in Portuguese, palatalized into the -nh- sound when followed by certain vowels in the imperfect endings. The preterite forms came from a different Latin stem entirely (the perfective), which is why teve, veio, and pôs look nothing like their imperfect cousins. You do not need the etymology to use the verbs — but it explains why the -nh- is a feature of this tense specifically rather than a property of the verb across the board.

A note for English speakers

English has no inflected imperfect at all, so all three of these verbs collapse into a single English past form ("had," "came," "put") that hides the aspect distinction Portuguese makes. The Portuguese imperfect of ter in particular does double duty: it can mean "used to have / had (a state)" and serve as the auxiliary "had" in "had done." English uses two different words for those ("used to have" vs. "had done"); Portuguese uses tinha for both, and context tells you which is meant. When tinha is followed by a past participle (tinha falado, tinha comprado), it is the auxiliary; standing alone, it expresses past possession or state.

The "tu" forms in Brazil

The forms tinhas, vinhas, punhas are listed as (regional) because in most of Brazil the second-person pronoun tu is either absent (replaced by você, which takes the same form as ele/ela) or used with the third-person verb form anyway. In the South (notably Rio Grande do Sul) and parts of the North and Northeast, tu is alive, but even there speakers frequently say tu tinha rather than the textbook tu tinhas. You should recognize the -s forms, but you will rarely need to produce them in Brazil.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Ter, vir, pôr share the irregular imperfect stems tinh-, vinh-, punh-; the endings are perfectly regular afterward.
• The nós forms all carry a written accent: tínhamos, vínhamos, púnhamos.
• The -nh- appears only in the imperfect; the preterite forms (teve, veio, pôs) are unrelated.
• Tinha
  • participle is the everyday past perfect ("had done"), the single most common use of this verb's imperfect.
• The tu forms with -s are regional in Brazil; you should recognize them but rarely need to produce them.