Pretérito Perfeito Simples Overview

The pretérito perfeito simples is the workhorse past tense of Brazilian Portuguese. When you want to say that something happened and finished — I spoke, we ate, she arrived — this is the tense you reach for. For an English speaker, it is the single most useful past tense to learn first, because it covers almost everything you would express with the English simple past.

What this tense does

The pretérito perfeito simples (often just called the pretérito perfeito or, informally, "the preterite") reports a completed action in the past. The action started, it ended, and you are looking at it as a finished whole.

In each of these, the event is over. You are not describing what was happening, what used to happen, or a state that stretched across time — you are pointing at a single, bounded event and saying: that occurred.

How it compares to English

English has one simple past (I spoke), and most of the time Portuguese matches it one-to-one with the pretérito perfeito. That is the good news: your instinct from English will be right far more often than not.

The catch is that Portuguese splits the past into more tenses than English does, so the simple past is not always the right choice. There are two close neighbours you need to keep separated in your mind.

Neighbour 1: the imperfeito (ongoing or habitual past)

The pretérito imperfeito describes the past as a backdrop rather than an event: things that were happening, things that used to happen, conditions that lasted. English usually signals this with was/were ...-ing or used to.

Here era (was) and falava (used to speak) are imperfeito — they describe a lasting state and a habit, not a single finished event. Compare it directly:

Falei is a one-time, completed act; falava is a recurring or background one. The full mechanics of choosing between them live on the perfeito vs imperfeito page, and the imperfeito itself is covered in the imperfeito overview. For now, just know that the imperfeito is a separate tense and the pretérito perfeito is the one for finished events.

Neighbour 2: the pretérito perfeito composto (BR-specific)

Brazilian Portuguese also has a compound form, tenho feito, tenho falado, built with ter plus a participle. It looks exactly like the English present perfect (I have done), and this is one of the most important traps for English speakers — because it does not mean the same thing.

The Portuguese tenho feito means an action that has been repeated or ongoing recently and continues: I have been doing it (lately, again and again).

It does not translate the English "I have already eaten." For that, Brazilian Portuguese uses the plain pretérito perfeito:

This is the single biggest interference error from English, so it gets its own treatment. See composto vs perfeito for the full picture. The rule to carry around in your head: the English present perfect is usually the Brazilian Portuguese simple preterite, not the compound.

The shape of the tense

You build the pretérito perfeito by dropping the infinitive ending (-ar, -er, -ir) and adding a set of personal endings. There are three regular patterns, one per verb class, plus a handful of very common irregular verbs. Here is a preview using one verb from each class so you can see the overall rhythm:

Each class has its own page: regular -ar, regular -er, and regular -ir.

The nós trap: syncretism with the present

Notice falamos and partimos. These two forms are identical to the present-tense nós forms. Nós falamos can mean either "we speak" (present) or "we spoke" (past), and the spelling gives you no clue. The -er class is different: present comemos and preterite comemos are spelled the same, though many speakers pronounce the stem vowel slightly more open in the preterite — but in writing they coincide too.

How do you tell them apart? Context does the work, usually a time word:

This overlap does not happen in English, where speak and spoke are visibly different, so it can feel unsettling at first. The reassurance is that native speakers rely on exactly the same contextual cues and almost never find it ambiguous in real conversation.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• The pretérito perfeito simples is the default past tense for completed, bounded events. It covers most of the English simple past.
• It contrasts with the imperfeito (ongoing, habitual, background past) and with the perfeito composto tenho feito (recently repeated or continuing actions).
• The English present perfect ("I have eaten," "I have seen") usually becomes the simple preterite in Brazilian Portuguese, not the look-alike compound.
• The nós forms of -ar and -ir verbs (falamos, partimos) coincide with the present tense; context, usually a time word, resolves the ambiguity.