Pretérito Perfeito of Dar, Ler, Rir, and Crer | Portuguese (Brazil) Grammar

Dar (to give), ler (to read), rir (to laugh), and crer (to believe) are four very short verbs whose infinitives feel almost too small to conjugate. They are traditionally listed as irregular, but their preterites are far gentler than that label suggests: the endings are stable and the stem behaves predictably. Once you accept the short shapes, the patterns are easy to trust.

The four paradigms

Person	dar (gave)	ler (read)	rir (laughed)	crer (believed)
eu	dei	li	ri	cri
tu (regional)	deste	leste	riste	creste
você / ele / ela	deu	leu	riu	creu
nós	demos	lemos	rimos	cremos
vocês / eles / elas	deram	leram	riram	creram

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Look at the vowel patterns and they snap into place: dei / deu, li / leu, ri / riu, cri / creu. The eu form and the ele form are a tight pair in each verb, and the plural forms (-emos / -eram, -imos / -iram) follow the regular -er and -ir endings you already know.

Dar — to give

Dar is an -ar verb, but its preterite does not take the usual -ei / -ou of the regular -ar class. Instead it has the irregular eu form dei and the third-person deu.

Eu dei o presente pra ela ontem.

I gave her the present yesterday.

Ele me deu uma carona até em casa.

He gave me a ride home.

Os professores deram uma semana de prazo.

The teachers gave a week's deadline.

The demos overlap

The nós preterite demos ("we gave") is spelled and pronounced exactly like the present subjunctive demos ("let's give / that we give"). So demos a aula could mean either "we gave the class" or, as a suggestion, "let's give the class." Context resolves it every time, but it is worth knowing the two coexist.

Ontem nós demos a aula no auditório.

Yesterday we gave the class in the auditorium. (past)

Vamos, demos um jeito nisso agora.

Come on, let's sort this out now. (subjunctive/suggestion)

Ler — to read

Ler is a regular-looking -er verb in the preterite once you remember its tiny stem is just l-. The eu form is li, the third person is leu.

Eu li esse livro em dois dias.

I read that book in two days.

Ela leu a mensagem mas não respondeu.

She read the message but didn't reply.

Nós lemos o contrato inteiro antes de assinar.

We read the whole contract before signing.

Be precise with the spelling: it is li (not lí) and leu (not lêu or leiu). No accent, no extra letters.

Rir — to laugh

Rir follows the -ir preterite endings on the stem r-: ri, riu, rimos, riram. The thing to watch is the preposition: in Portuguese you laugh de someone or something (rir de), where English says "laugh at." So the object is introduced by de, not by a direct translation of "at."

Eu ri tanto que comecei a chorar.

I laughed so hard I started to cry.

Todo mundo riu da piada menos ele.

Everyone laughed at the joke except him.

Eles riram de mim quando eu tropecei.

They laughed at me when I tripped.

In casual Brazilian speech you'll also hear the synonym dar risada ("to give a laugh, to crack up"), which is fully regular: dei risada, deu risada. It is more colloquial than rir but extremely common.

Crer — to believe

Crer is the rarest of the four in everyday Brazilian speech — people usually say achar or acreditar instead, and crer leans slightly formal or literary. Its preterite is cri, creu, cremos, creram, parallel to ler.

Ninguém creu na história dele no começo.

No one believed his story at first. (somewhat formal)

Eu cri em você até o fim.

I believed in you until the end. (literary/emphatic)

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In conversation, you'll hear acreditei / achei far more than cri. Learn cri / creu to read and recognize them, but reach for acreditar when you speak: Eu não acreditei nele.

Why these feel "incomplete" — and why they aren't

Because the infinitives are so short (dar, ler, rir, crer), the conjugated forms can feel like fragments — li, ri, cri are single syllables. English speakers expect a verb to carry more body, so they instinctively want to "pad" the form, producing things like leu → leiu or deu → deiu. Resist that instinct. The vowel pairs (dei/deu, li/leu, ri/riu, cri/creu) are short on purpose and completely stable. There is nothing missing.

Compared with English, the trap is that English "read" is spelled the same in present and past (only the pronunciation changes), whereas Portuguese gives you a visibly different past form — leio (I read, present) vs li (I read, past). Don't carry the English "same spelling" habit over.

There's a second mismatch worth flagging. English "give" has the irregular past "gave," but English "read," "laugh," and "believe" feel either invisible (read) or fully regular (laughed, believed). Portuguese reverses the intuition: dar and ler and rir and crer are all officially "irregular," yet their preterites are short and tidy. The label scares learners more than the forms deserve. If you can say dei, li, ri, cri and deu, leu, riu, creu without flinching, you have already mastered the hard part.

Common Mistakes

❌ Eu deiu o livro pra ele.

Incorrect — 'deiu' is not a word; the eu form is dei.

✅ Eu dei o livro pra ele.

I gave him the book.

❌ Ela leiu o jornal de manhã.

Incorrect — the third-person form is leu, with no i.

✅ Ela leu o jornal de manhã.

She read the paper in the morning.

❌ Nós riemos muito na festa.

Incorrect — the nós form of rir is rimos, not 'riemos'.

✅ Nós rimos muito na festa.

We laughed a lot at the party.

❌ Eu dí o dinheiro pra ela.

Incorrect — the eu preterite of dar is dei, not 'dí'.

✅ Eu dei o dinheiro pra ela.

I gave her the money.

❌ Eles leram, mas eu li não.

Incorrect — Portuguese negates before the verb: eu não li.

✅ Eles leram, mas eu não li.

They read it, but I didn't.

Key takeaways

dar: dei, deste (regional), deu, demos, deram.
ler: li, leste (regional), leu, lemos, leram.
rir: ri, riste (regional), riu, rimos, riram.
crer: cri, creste (regional), creu, cremos, creram.
The vowel pairs dei/deu, li/leu, ri/riu, cri/creu are short and stable — don't add extra letters.
demos (we gave) and demos (let's give) are identical; context tells them apart.
In speech, prefer achar/acreditar over crer.

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