Pretérito Perfeito: Regular -er Verbs

The -er preterite endings are clean and regular, and the pattern is easy to learn. The real thing to watch out for in this class is not the regular verbs themselves but the fact that many of the most common -er verbs are irregular — so you need to know which ones follow the model and which ones go their own way.

The endings

Drop the -er and add:

The two signature forms

• -i for eu. This is the shortest preterite ending in the language: comi, bebi, vendi. Just the bare stem plus a stressed -i. English speakers sometimes under-pronounce it because it is so short, but it carries the full meaning "I ...-ed."
• -eu for você/ele/ela. The characteristic -er third-person sound: comeu, bebeu, escreveu. Don't confuse it with the -ar third person -ou (falou); the vowel is different and tells you which class you're in.

The nós form: same spelling as the present

Just like with -ar verbs, the nós preterite comemos is spelled exactly like the present-tense comemos. In speech, many Brazilians open the stem vowel in the preterite (a more open /ɛ/) versus a closer vowel in the present, which gives a subtle audible hint — but orthography does not mark this difference at all. In writing, the two are identical and context resolves them.

A table of common regular -er verbs

These verbs follow the comer model without surprises:

A note on conhecer — no spelling change in the eu form

If you know Spanish, watch out here. Spanish conocer becomes conocí in the first person preterite (with an í), and that c → c with the soft sound is fine in Spanish. In Portuguese, conhecer is even simpler: the eu form is conheci, with no spelling change at all. The c is already soft before the -i ending (ce/ci are soft in Portuguese), so nothing needs adjusting.

Contrast this with the -ar spelling-change verbs (fiquei, cheguei), where the eu ending starts with e and forces an adjustment. With -er and -ir verbs, the eu ending is -i, which keeps soft consonants soft automatically — so these classes have no spelling-change verbs in the preterite.

The big warning: many common -er verbs are irregular

This is the most important thing to take away from this page. The regular pattern above is real and useful, but a striking number of the highest-frequency verbs you will actually want to use in the past are irregular in the preterite and do not follow it:

Do not try to force these into the comi/comeu mold — you will produce forms that no Brazilian says. Each of these is genuinely irregular and must be learned individually. They each have their own page: the shared ser/ir preterite (fui, foi, foram) is covered in the preterite of ser and ir, and the others follow in the irregular-preterite series.

This pattern — the most frequent verbs being the most irregular — is the same in English, and for the same historical reason: high-frequency verbs are used so often that older, irregular forms never wear smooth into the regular pattern. English be, have, do, go, make, can are all irregular, and their Portuguese counterparts ser, ter, fazer, ir, fazer, poder are too. So your English instinct is actually a useful early-warning system here: the verbs that would be irregular in English are very likely irregular in Portuguese as well.

Common Mistakes