Pretérito Perfeito of Saber and Trazer | Portuguese (Brazil) Grammar

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

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The -x- in trouxe / trouxemos / trouxeram is always pronounced /s/. Learners who spell it trousse are hearing it right but writing it wrong — the correct spelling keeps the x. This is pure memorization; there is no rule that predicts it.

Trazer in use

Eu trouxe um presente pra você.

I brought a present for you.

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.

Eu não sabia que você morava aqui!

I didn't know you lived here! (ongoing state of not-knowing)

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.

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The contrast is mechanical and reliable: preterite = the click of learning (soube), imperfect = the steady state of knowing (sabia). When you can paraphrase English "knew" as "found out / realized," that is your cue to use soube.

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.

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