Present Indicative of Fazer and Dizer

Fazer ("to do / to make") and dizer ("to say") are two of the busiest verbs in Brazilian Portuguese, and they conjugate as a matched pair: both end in -zer and share the same irregular shape. Learn one and the other costs almost nothing. Fazer in particular is a semantic giant — it covers far more ground than English "do" or "make" — so it rewards close attention.

The shared -zer pattern

Both verbs keep a regular-looking present except in the eu form, where a historical sound change reshaped the consonant.

The tu forms are fazes and dizes (regional). There is no vós in Brazilian Portuguese.

Two spelling points carry real weight:

• faço takes a cedilla (ç). Without it, faco would be read with a hard /k/ sound. The cedilla preserves the /s/ sound the z of the stem would otherwise lose before the -o ending.
• digo swaps the stem z for a g (a historical development from Latin dico). You cannot predict it from the infinitive; just learn that dizer's eu form is digo.

One pattern, a whole family

The payoff for learning this pair is that the -zer shape repeats across other high-frequency verbs. Trazer ("to bring") gives trago, traz, trazemos, trazem — same cedilla logic in the eu form, same consonant-final third person. Compounds of dizer and fazer inherit the pattern wholesale: desfazer ("to undo") runs desfaço, desfaz; contradizer ("to contradict") runs contradigo, contradiz. Internalize faço/digo once and you have effectively learned a dozen verbs, because Portuguese builds them by gluing prefixes onto the same irregular core.

Fazer is a semantic giant

In English, "do" and "make" split the work, and other verbs ("ask," "study," "take") cover the rest. Brazilian Portuguese loads an astonishing range of meanings onto fazer alone. When you are unsure which verb to use, fazer is frequently the right guess.

Make / do (the core meaning)

Ask (a question) — fazer uma pergunta

You do not "ask" a question in Portuguese; you make one.

Study (a subject) — fazer + field

To say what you study or major in, you "do" the subject.

Turn an age — fazer + number

Brazilians "make" an age on their birthday rather than "being" or "turning" it.

Weather — faz calor, faz frio

Weather expressions are impersonal and use the singular faz with no subject — the same slot English fills with a dummy "it."

Elapsed time — faz dois anos

Faz + a time span means "ago" or "for [a duration]," again impersonally.

This last one routinely surprises English speakers: faz here means roughly "it makes / it has been." See the dedicated treatment of these time expressions for more.

Dizer and reported speech

Dizer introduces what someone says or said — the backbone of reported speech. It very often pairs with que ("that").

A second reported-speech pattern uses dizer para + infinitive to report a command — "tell someone to do something."

This is the bridge into reported commands, where what was an imperative ("Beba mais água!") becomes an embedded infinitive. The construction is covered more fully under reported speech.

dizer vs falar — a Brazilian wrinkle

In careful grammar, dizer = "say/tell (a content)" and falar = "speak/talk." But in everyday Brazilian speech, falar has expanded to cover much of dizer's territory, especially "to tell someone something":

Both are understood and used. Dizer stays the safer, more written-standard choice for "tell"; falar is the relaxed spoken default. The two are compared in detail on the dizer vs falar reference.

Common Mistakes

Key takeaways

• fazer: faço, faz, fazemos, fazem — cedilla on faço.
• dizer: digo, diz, dizemos, dizem — g in digo.
• fazer also handles asking questions, studying a subject, turning an age, weather, and elapsed time. When unsure, it is a strong guess.
• dizer carries reported speech with que; in casual speech falar often replaces it for "tell."