The pretérito perfeito composto is mechanically simple to build: take the present-indicative forms of the auxiliary verb ter and add the past participle of the main verb. The two things you must get right are which auxiliary to use (it is almost always ter, not haver) and the fact that the participle is invariant — it never changes to agree with the subject. This page walks through both.
The recipe: present of ter + past participle
The auxiliary carries the person and number; the participle stays fixed. Here is the full paradigm with the verb falar ("to speak"):
| Person | Auxiliary (ter) | Participle | Full form |
|---|---|---|---|
| eu | tenho | falado | tenho falado |
| você / ele / ela | tem | falado | tem falado |
| tu (regional) | tens | falado | tens falado |
| nós | temos | falado | temos falado |
| vocês / eles / elas | têm | falado | têm falado |
Tenho falado muito ao telefone esses dias.
I've been talking a lot on the phone these days.
Eles têm chegado atrasados toda semana.
They've been arriving late every week.
Pay close attention to the third-person plural. The form is têm — with a circumflex accent — and it is pronounced with a slight nasal diphthong, distinct in writing (though similar in casual speech) from the singular tem. This accent is not optional decoration; têm (they have) and tem (he/she/you have) are different words, and dropping the accent is a spelling error.
A note on tu and the everyday register
In most of Brazil, the dominant second-person pronoun is você, which takes the same verb form as ele/ela — so you will overwhelmingly hear and use você tem falado. The form tens falado (with tu) is genuinely used in parts of the South and in some Northeastern speech, and you should recognize it, but for general Brazilian Portuguese tem (with você) is the form to default to. (regional: South / parts of the Northeast for tens).
Você tem dormido bem?
Have you been sleeping well?
Tu tens trabalhado demais, guri. (regional: South)
You've been working too much, kid.
Ter versus haver as the auxiliary
Historically Portuguese also formed compound tenses with haver (havia falado, hei de falar). For the perfeito composto, the equivalent would be hei falado — but this is essentially dead in modern Brazilian Portuguese. In practice ter is the auxiliary for the perfeito composto, full stop. You will meet haver as a compound auxiliary mainly in the pluperfect of formal writing (havia falado, "had spoken"), which is heavy and literary and rare in speech. For this tense, do not use haver.
Tenho pensado muito nisso. (everyday, with ter)
I've been thinking about this a lot.
Havia pensado nisso antes. (formal/literary — pluperfect, a different tense)
I had thought about it before.
Building the participle
The regular past participle is formed by replacing the infinitive ending:
| Verb class | Ending | Example infinitive | Participle |
|---|---|---|---|
| -ar verbs | -ado | falar, trabalhar | falado, trabalhado |
| -er verbs | -ido | comer, viver | comido, vivido |
| -ir verbs | -ido | partir, dormir | partido, dormido |
So: falar → falado, comer → comido, viver → vivido, partir → partido. A number of common verbs have irregular participles (fazer → feito, ver → visto, dizer → dito, pôr → posto, abrir → aberto), which are covered in the irregular-participle pages. Those irregular participles are used in the composto exactly the same way.
Tenho feito muito exercício ultimamente.
I've been doing a lot of exercise lately.
Ela tem visto pouco os amigos esse ano.
She's been seeing little of her friends this year.
The participle is invariant — this is the key rule
When the participle is part of the perfeito composto (the active "have done" construction), it never agrees with the subject. It stays locked in its base form, which happens to be masculine singular: -ado / -ido. It does not become -ada, -ados, or -adas no matter who the subject is.
Ela tem comido bem.
She has been eating well.
As meninas têm estudado muito.
The girls have been studying a lot.
In both sentences the participle stays comido / estudado — masculine singular — even though the subjects are feminine and, in the second, plural. Writing comida or estudadas there would be an error.
This is a genuine point of difference from several other languages, and it is exactly where speakers of French and Italian (and even some habits from European Portuguese) trip up. In French, je suis allé / je suis allée changes for gender; in Italian, sono andato / sono andata likewise. Portuguese has nothing of the sort in this construction. The participle in the active ter + participle perfect is frozen.
Agreement does happen when the participle works as an adjective (a porta está fechada, "the door is closed") or in the passive voice (os documentos foram assinados, "the documents were signed"). Those are different constructions, covered on the past-participle pages. The line to hold onto: with ter, no agreement; with estar or ser as a state/passive, agreement.
Putting it together
Nós temos viajado muito a trabalho.
We've been traveling a lot for work.
Os preços têm subido sem parar.
Prices have been rising nonstop.
Tenho lido bastante sobre o assunto.
I've been reading a lot about the subject.
Common Mistakes
❌ Ela tem comida bem.
Incorrect — the participle was wrongly made feminine to agree with 'ela.'
✅ Ela tem comido bem.
She has been eating well.
The active participle never agrees with the subject; keep it as comido.
❌ As meninas têm estudadas muito.
Incorrect — the participle was wrongly pluralized.
✅ As meninas têm estudado muito.
The girls have been studying a lot.
No number agreement either — estudado stays singular.
❌ Eles tem chegado cedo.
Incorrect — the auxiliary for 'eles' must be the plural form with the circumflex.
✅ Eles têm chegado cedo.
They've been arriving early.
Third-person plural needs têm with the circumflex accent, not the singular tem.
❌ Hei falado com ela. (using haver as the perfect auxiliary)
Incorrect/archaic — not used in modern Brazilian Portuguese.
✅ Tenho falado com ela.
I've been talking to her.
The composto auxiliary is ter, not haver.
Key Takeaways
Build the perfeito composto as present of ter + past participle: tenho/tem/temos/têm + falado/comido/partido. The third-person plural is têm (circumflex), distinct from singular tem. The auxiliary is ter, not haver. The participle is invariant in this active construction — frozen as masculine singular, never agreeing with the subject in gender or number, unlike French and Italian. Agreement appears only when the participle is an adjective or part of the passive, which are separate constructions.
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Start learning Portuguese→Related Topics
- Pretérito Perfeito Composto: OverviewA2 — Why the Brazilian 'tenho falado' does NOT mean the English present perfect — it means an action repeated or continued from a past point up to now.
- Iterative/Continuous Meaning: 'Tem feito'B1 — Drilling the one thing the Brazilian present perfect actually means: an action repeated or continued from a recent past point right up to now.
- Regular Past Participles (-ado, -ido)A2 — How to build the regular past participle in Brazilian Portuguese — -ar verbs take -ado, -er and -ir verbs take -ido — with pronunciation, the four agreement forms, and plenty of examples.
- Irregular Past ParticiplesA2 — The high-frequency Brazilian Portuguese verbs whose past participles don't follow the -ado/-ido pattern — visto, feito, dito, escrito, posto, aberto, vindo, ganho — plus the verbs that have both a regular and irregular form.
- Present Indicative of TerA1 — How to conjugate ter in Brazilian Portuguese for possession and age, the mandatory tem/têm accent, and the everyday existential 'tem' that replaces há.
- Translating English Present Perfect into BRB1 — English 'have/has + done' maps onto THREE different Brazilian structures — present + há, the simple preterite (+ já), and the perfeito composto. Here's how to choose.