Saber ("to know") and trazer ("to bring") round out the family of strong irregular preterites. Their forms look alien at first — soube / souberam and trouxe / trouxeram — because both verbs replace their stem entirely in the past: sab- becomes soub-, and traz- becomes troux-, where that -x- is pronounced /s/. But saber hides something more interesting than spelling: in the preterite it stops meaning "knew" and starts meaning "found out." That shift is one of the cleanest, most teachable contrasts in the whole Brazilian past-tense system.
Conjugating saber
The preterite stem is soub- across the board. As with several other strong verbs, the eu and the você/ele/ela forms are identical: both are soube.
| Subject | Pretérito perfeito |
|---|---|
| eu | soube |
| tu (regional) | soubeste |
| você / ele / ela | soube |
| nós | soubemos |
| vocês / eles / elas | souberam |
Conjugating trazer
The preterite stem is troux-. The spelling trap is the -x-, which here sounds like /s/ — trouxe is pronounced roughly "TROH-see," not with the "sh" or "ks" sound the letter x takes elsewhere in Portuguese.
| Subject | Pretérito perfeito |
|---|---|
| eu | trouxe |
| tu (regional) | trouxeste |
| você / ele / ela | trouxe |
| nós | trouxemos |
| vocês / eles / elas | trouxeram |
Trazer in use
Quem trouxe a sobremesa?
Who brought the dessert?
Vocês trouxeram os documentos que pedi?
Did you all bring the documents I asked for?
A quick contrast worth noting: trazer is movement toward the speaker ("bring here"), while levar is movement away ("take there"). English "bring" and "take" make the same split, so this one transfers cleanly — just don't confuse trouxe (brought) with anything from levar.
The big idea: soube = "found out," not "knew"
Here is the contrast that makes this page worth studying carefully. Saber describes knowledge, and knowledge is normally a state — you know something over a stretch of time. States in the past take the imperfect (sabia, "knew / used to know"). So when saber appears in the preterite (soube), it cannot mean the ongoing state. Instead it marks the moment the knowledge began — the instant you learned it. Soube = "found out, learned, came to know."
Ontem eu soube que ela viajou pro exterior.
Yesterday I found out she traveled abroad.
The first sentence reports the discrete event of learning the news → soube. The second describes an ongoing background state of ignorance → sabia. English "I knew" and "I found out" are different verbs, but English also lets you say "I knew" loosely where Portuguese insists on the precise soube (inception) versus sabia (state).
| Meaning | Tense | Form | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| "found out / learned" (a moment) | preterite | soube | Soube da notícia hoje. |
| "knew / used to know" (a state) | imperfect | sabia | Eu já sabia da notícia. |
Como você soube do meu aniversário?
How did you find out about my birthday?
Eu sempre soube que você ia conseguir.
I always knew you'd make it.
That second one is the famous exception worth flagging: with sempre ("always"), soube is idiomatic and means "I always knew" — the preterite frames the long-held conviction as a single, complete fact. It is a fixed expression; outside it, the rule (soube = found out, sabia = knew) holds firmly.
Note this is a different distinction from saber vs. conhecer (knowing facts vs. being acquainted with people/places) — see saber vs. conhecer for that one.
Common Mistakes
❌ Ontem eu sabia que ela viajou.
Wrong tense — sabia (state) can't report the discrete moment of finding out.
✅ Ontem eu soube que ela viajou.
Yesterday I found out she traveled.
Ontem points to a specific moment of discovery, so you need the inceptive soube, not the ongoing sabia.
❌ Eu trousse um presente.
Incorrect spelling — the verb is spelled with -x-, not -ss-.
✅ Eu trouxe um presente.
I brought a present.
The /s/ sound is written x in trouxe. Trust the spelling, not the pronunciation.
❌ Eu sabi a resposta na hora.
Incorrect — saber is irregular; the eu preterite is soube, not 'sabi.'
✅ Eu soube a resposta na hora.
I came up with / figured out the answer right away.
Saber never regularizes to sabi. The strong preterite is soube, and here it carries the "came to know in the moment" sense.
❌ Nós trazemos o vinho ontem.
Incorrect — trazemos is present; the past nós form is trouxemos.
✅ Nós trouxemos o vinho ontem.
We brought the wine yesterday.
Ontem forces the past; the nós preterite of trazer is trouxemos.
❌ Eles soube da verdade.
Incorrect — plural subject needs the plural form souberam.
✅ Eles souberam da verdade.
They found out the truth.
Soube is singular (and ambiguous between eu and ele); the third-person plural is souberam.
Key Takeaways
- Saber → preterite stem soub-: soube, (soubeste), soube, soubemos, souberam, with eu and ele identical.
- Trazer → preterite stem troux-: trouxe, (trouxeste), trouxe, trouxemos, trouxeram; the -x- is /s/.
- In the preterite, saber shifts: soube = found out / learned, a discrete event — not the ongoing "knew," which is the imperfect sabia.
- The fixed phrase sempre soube ("always knew") is the one idiomatic exception to that rule.
Related Topics
- Pretérito Perfeito of Poder and QuererA2 — How to conjugate poder (pude, pôde, puderam) and querer (quis, quiseram) in the simple past — including the pode/pôde accent and the meaning shifts that trip up English speakers.
- Pretérito Perfeito vs Imperfeito: OverviewA2 — The central contrast in the Portuguese past: perfeito for completed events that move the story forward, imperfeito for ongoing, habitual, and background states.
- SaberA1 — How to conjugate and use saber (to know facts, to know how to) in Brazilian Portuguese — a highly irregular -er verb with sei, soube, saiba, souber.
- TrazerA1 — How to conjugate and use trazer (to bring) in Brazilian Portuguese — a highly irregular -er verb — covering its tricky stems (trago, trouxe, trarei, traga, trouxer) and its deictic contrast with levar (to take).
- Saber vs Conhecer: Knowing What vs WhomA2 — How to choose between saber and conhecer, the two Portuguese verbs for 'to know' — facts and know-how vs acquaintance and familiarity.