Present Indicative of Ver, Ler, and Crer

Ver (to see), ler (to read), and crer (to believe) are three high-frequency -er verbs that look tiny but refuse to follow the regular comer pattern. They are worth learning together because they share exactly the same two quirks: a consonant or vowel that pops up in the eu form and nowhere else, and a doubled vowel in the vocês/eles/elas form. Master the shape once and you get all three.

The shared shape

Here are the three verbs side by side in the present indicative. Notice how the irregularities line up column by column.

(As always in Brazilian Portuguese, the tu forms — vês, lês, crês — are regional. There is no vós.)

Two things to fix in your memory:

1. The eu form gains a sound. Ver inserts a -j- (ve-j-o), while ler and crer insert an -i- (le-i-o, cre-i-o). This intrusion happens only in the eu form. Everywhere else the stem is bare.
2. The third-person plural doubles the vowel. veem, leem, creem — two e's, with no accent.

Why the eu form is special

The -j- in vejo and the -i- in leio/creio are not random — they are fossils of how these verbs sounded in Latin and Old Portuguese, preserved precisely because the eu form was used so often that it resisted being smoothed out. You do not need the history to use them, but it helps to know there is a reason: the eu form is the conservative slot in Portuguese, the one most likely to keep an old irregularity while the rest of the paradigm regularizes.

This is a pattern you will see again and again. In fazer and dizer it's faço and digo; in trazer it's trago. The lesson generalizes: when a Brazilian verb is irregular in the present, the eu form is almost always where the damage is concentrated.

The spelling story: veem, not vêem

Here is the single most important orthographic point on this page, and one that trips up nearly everyone who learned from an older book.

Before the Acordo Ortográfico de 1990 (which Brazil fully adopted by 2009–2012), the third-person plural forms carried a circumflex on the first vowel: vêem, lêem, crêem. The accent marked that the two e's were pronounced as a sequence, not merged.

The Acordo removed that circumflex. Modern Brazilian Portuguese writes:

So if you see vêem in a novel, a sign, or an old grammar, it is not wrong for its era — it is simply pre-reform spelling. Write veem today.

But the singular keeps its circumflex

This is the contrast that catches people. The reform removed the accent only from the plural. The third-person singular — vê, lê, crê — still carries a circumflex, because it is a single stressed vowel that needs marking.

Comparison with English

English "see," "read," and "believe" are flat — apart from adding -s in the third person ("he sees"), they don't change. Portuguese spreads its irregularity across more slots, but the trade-off is that the ending tells you the subject, so you can — and usually do — drop the pronoun entirely.

There is one false friend worth flagging. English "read" is famously irregular in the past (read/read/read, with a vowel change you only hear, not see). Portuguese ler is regular-looking in spelling across its tenses but irregular in this present paradigm — so don't assume the difficulty maps. The present is where ler misbehaves; learn it here.

Also note that crer (to believe a proposition is true) overlaps with but is not identical to acreditar (to believe / to trust). In everyday Brazilian speech, acreditar is far more common; crer leans slightly formal or is reserved for matters of faith and conviction.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Eu forms are the irregular core: vejo (-j-), leio, creio (-i-). Learn these first.
• The plural is a doubled vowel with no accent: veem, leem, creem — the circumflex was dropped by the Acordo (old: vêem, lêem, crêem).
• The singular keeps its circumflex: vê, lê, crê. Singular gets the hat; plural doesn't.
• A gente takes the singular form (vê, lê, crê), never the plural.