Present Indicative of Vir

Vir means "to come" — movement toward the speaker, the mirror image of ir. It is irregular, it hides one of the most commonly mistyped diacritics in the whole language, and it overlaps in form with two other verbs. This page sorts all of that out.

The forms

Like ir, vir does not conjugate from its infinitive in a tidy way. The stem shifts and the eu form grows an extra consonant.

The tu form is vens (regional). There is no vós in Brazilian Portuguese.

Note the eu form venho — the -nh- (pronounced like the ny in "canyon") appears out of nowhere. This is a fossil of the Latin original (venio) and shows up again in the present subjunctive (venha). Just learn it as the shape of the eu form.

Why is vir irregular at all? Because it is so frequent. Across languages, the most-used verbs resist regularization: they are spoken too often to ever be "tidied up" by analogy. "Come," "go," and "be" are irregular in English for exactly the same reason. So the irregularity of vir is not bad luck — it is a sign of how central the verb is, which is also the reason it is worth the effort to nail down.

The vem / vêm trap

This is the single most important spelling point on the page. The singular and plural forms sound almost identical but are written differently:

• vem (no accent) = você / ele / ela vem — "he/she/you comes"
• vêm (circumflex) = vocês / eles / elas vêm — "they/you-all come"

The circumflex on vêm is the only thing in writing that tells the reader you mean a plural subject. It is not optional and it is not decorative — dropping it is a genuine spelling error, exactly the kind a careful Brazilian reader notices immediately. (The same pattern hits ter: tem singular versus têm plural, and ver: vê versus veem.)

The vimos overlap with ver

The nós form vimos is spelled and pronounced exactly like the nós preterite of ver (to see): nós vimos um filme = "we saw a film." So vimos can mean either "we come" (present of vir) or "we saw" (past of ver). Brazilian Portuguese lives with this collision and lets context resolve it — there is no rule that disambiguates, you simply read the rest of the sentence.

In practice the ambiguity rarely causes trouble: a time word like sempre (always) or ontem (yesterday), or the surrounding verbs, makes the meaning obvious.

Uses of vir

Physical motion toward the speaker

The shortened vem cá ("come here") is one of the most frequent everyday commands in Brazil.

Origin

Vir de answers "where are you from / where does this come from."

Vir a + infinitive — "come to / end up"

The construction vir a + infinitive expresses something that eventually happens or that one comes to do, often after a process. It is a touch more formal in flavor. Note the difference between bare vir + infinitive (which means "to come in order to do something" — purpose) and vir a + infinitive (which means "to end up doing / to come to do" — outcome). The little a changes the meaning from intention to eventual result.

This is treated more fully on the vir a + infinitive page.

Brazilians often say "chegar," not "vir"

Here is a usage point English speakers miss. For arrival — the moment of getting somewhere — Brazilian Portuguese strongly prefers chegar ("to arrive") over vir. Where an English speaker might reach for "he came yesterday," a Brazilian far more naturally says ele chegou ontem ("he arrived yesterday").

The rough split: use vir for the movement toward you ("she's coming," still in motion or planned), and chegar for the completed arrival ("he got here"). English collapses both into "come," so this is a distinction you have to add consciously.

Common Mistakes

Key takeaways

• venho, vem, vimos, vêm (regional vens); the eu form has the surprise -nh-.
• vem (singular) vs vêm (plural, circumflex) is a mandatory spelling distinction.
• vimos doubles as the past of ver ("we saw") — let context decide.
• Use vir for motion toward you, but reach for chegar when you mean "arrived."