Pretérito Perfeito of Ver and Vir | Portuguese (Brazil) Grammar

Ver (to see) and vir (to come) are the single most error-prone pair in the entire Brazilian preterite. Their infinitives are one letter apart, their forms overlap in sound and shape, and English gives you no instinct for telling them apart. This page treats them together on purpose — the only way to stop confusing them is to drill them side by side until the contrast becomes automatic.

The two paradigms

Here are both verbs in the pretérito perfeito, laid out so you can see exactly where they collide.

Person	ver (saw)	vir (came)
eu	vi	vim
tu (regional)	viste	vieste
você / ele / ela	viu	veio
nós	vimos	viemos
vocês / eles / elas	viram	vieram

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Both verbs are completely irregular here — there is no rule to derive these forms from the infinitive. You memorize them as a pair, and you memorize the points where they clash: vi / vim, viu / veio, and vimos / viemos.

Ver — to see

Eu vi o seu irmão no shopping ontem.

I saw your brother at the mall yesterday.

Você viu o jogo do Brasil?

Did you see the Brazil game?

A gente nunca viu nada parecido.

We've never seen anything like it.

Eles viram tudo pela janela.

They saw everything through the window.

Notice that the eu form vi has no m and is just two letters. It is the same root you'll recognize from the verb's other forms, and it stays short and clean.

Vir — to come

Eu vim de ônibus, demorou uma hora.

I came by bus, it took an hour.

Ela veio sozinha pra festa.

She came to the party alone.

Nós viemos correndo quando ouvimos o barulho.

We came running when we heard the noise.

Por que vocês não vieram ontem?

Why didn't you come yesterday?

The vir forms all carry that telltale -ie- or -ei- vowel cluster that ver simply does not have: vieste, viemos, vieram, and the odd one out, veio.

The three collisions — drill these

vi vs vim — "I saw" vs "I came"

The only visible difference is a final m. In speech the m nasalizes the vowel, so they actually sound quite different (vi rhymes with English "vee," vim sounds like "veeng"), but in writing the contrast is a single letter and learners drop or add it constantly.

Eu vi o filme, mas não vim ao cinema com vocês.

I saw the film, but I didn't come to the cinema with you.

viu vs veio — "saw" vs "came"

This is the deadliest pair. The third-person form of vir is veio, and it is highly irregular. Learners reach for a "logical" spelling and write veiu or veu — neither of those words exists in Portuguese. The only correct form is veio, spelled v-e-i-o, ending in -o.

Ele viu o acidente e veio me avisar na hora.

He saw the accident and came to warn me right away.

❌ Ela veiu cedo. / Ela veu cedo.

Incorrect — neither 'veiu' nor 'veu' is a real word.

✅ Ela veio cedo.

She came early.

vimos vs viemos — "we saw" vs "we came"

One extra letter — the e — flips the entire meaning. Vimos is from ver (we saw); viemos is from vir (we came). Because both are common and both describe past events, the wrong choice produces a perfectly grammatical sentence with the wrong meaning, which makes the error hard to catch.

Nós vimos o pôr do sol e depois viemos pra casa.

We watched the sunset and then came home.

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To keep vimos and viemos straight, anchor on the i-e: vir has the extra e because vir itself has an i in the infinitive that wants company. "Came" → the longer word viemos; "saw" → the shorter word vimos.

Why English speakers struggle here

English keeps "see/saw/seen" and "come/came/come" in completely separate boxes — there is no risk of mixing them, because the words look nothing alike. Portuguese, by historical accident, evolved two verbs whose preterites rhyme and share letters. Your English ear gives you no warning signal, so you have to build the contrast deliberately. The good news: once veio and vim are locked in, they are locked in for good, because there is nothing else in the language they can be confused with.

There is one more overlap that ties the two verbs together. The preterite nós form of ver is vimos ("we saw") — and that exact spelling is also the present nós form of vir ("we come / are coming"). So vimos alone is ambiguous between "we saw" and "we come," and only context or a time word tells you which verb and which tense you're dealing with. (The present nós of ver, by contrast, is vemos, so it stays out of the collision.)

Nós vimos aqui todo domingo, e foi aqui que vimos o seu irmão semana passada.

We come here every Sunday, and it was here that we saw your brother last week.

Common Mistakes

❌ Ela veiu me visitar no domingo.

Incorrect — 'veiu' does not exist.

✅ Ela veio me visitar no domingo.

She came to visit me on Sunday.

❌ Eu vim um filme ótimo ontem.

Incorrect — 'vim' is from vir (came); to say 'I saw' use vi.

✅ Eu vi um filme ótimo ontem.

I saw a great film yesterday.

❌ Nós vimos de carro porque estava chovendo.

Incorrect — 'vimos' means 'we saw'; for 'we came' use viemos.

✅ Nós viemos de carro porque estava chovendo.

We came by car because it was raining.

❌ Eu vi tarde pra reunião.

Incorrect — to say 'I came late' you need vim, not vi.

✅ Eu vim tarde pra reunião.

I came late to the meeting.

❌ Eles veram o show inteiro.

Incorrect — the third-plural of ver is viram, not 'veram'.

✅ Eles viram o show inteiro.

They watched the whole show.

Key takeaways

ver: vi, viste (regional), viu, vimos, viram.
vir: vim, vieste (regional), veio, viemos, vieram.
The form veio (he/she came) is irregular and is never spelled veiu or veu.
vi = I saw, vim = I came. vimos = we saw, viemos = we came.
Drill the three collisions (vi/vim, viu/veio, vimos/viemos) until they are automatic — your English instincts will not help you here.

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