Presente do Subjuntivo: Irregular Verbs | Portuguese (Brazil) Grammar

Once you can build the regular present subjunctive, the irregulars are far less scary than they look — because most of them are not really irregular at all. They follow one beautifully consistent rule: take the eu form of the present indicative, drop the -o, and add the subjunctive endings. This page walks through that rule, then isolates the small set of verbs that genuinely break it. Knowing which is which saves you from memorizing dozens of forms you can already predict.

The rule that explains most "irregulars"

The present subjunctive of an -ar verb takes -e endings (fale, fale, falemos, falem); -er and -ir verbs take -a endings (coma, coma, comamos, comam). The key is which stem those endings attach to. For the vast majority of verbs, the stem is whatever you find in the eu form of the present indicative, minus its final -o.

Take fazer. The eu form is faço. Drop the -o, and you get the stem faç-. Add -a endings and the whole paradigm appears: faça, faça, façamos, façam. The "irregularity" of faço is simply carried over into the subjunctive — there is nothing extra to learn.

Infinitive	eu form (present)	Subjunctive stem	Present subjunctive
fazer	faço	faç-	faça, faça, façamos, façam
dizer	digo	dig-	diga, diga, digamos, digam
trazer	trago	trag-	traga, traga, tragamos, tragam
ter	tenho	tenh-	tenha, tenha, tenhamos, tenham
vir	venho	venh-	venha, venha, venhamos, venham
poder	posso	poss-	possa, possa, possamos, possam
ver	vejo	vej-	veja, veja, vejamos, vejam

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If a verb is irregular only in the eu form (like faço, digo, tenho, venho), it is automatically irregular in the present subjunctive too — but you do not memorize anything new. Conjugate the eu form, chop the -o, and you are done.

Quero que você faça o seu melhor.

I want you to do your best.

Espero que eles venham para o jantar.

I hope they come to dinner.

Tomara que a gente tenha tempo amanhã.

I hope we have time tomorrow. (informal)

Ter and haver

Ter and haver deserve a moment because they show up constantly — ter in everyday speech, haver in the existential sense ("there to be") and in compound tenses.

Subject	ter	haver
que eu	tenha	haja
que você / ele / ela	tenha	haja
que nós	tenhamos	hajamos
que vocês / eles / elas	tenham	hajam

Both come straight from their eu forms (tenho → tenh-, hei is the odd one out historically but the subjunctive stem is haj-, matching the old hajo).

Talvez haja uma solução melhor.

Maybe there's a better solution.

É bom que você tenha guardado o recibo.

It's good that you kept the receipt.

The six truly suppletive subjunctives

Now the genuinely irregular ones. Six verbs have a present subjunctive that does not derive from their eu form. You simply have to memorize them — and the good news is that they are exactly six, so you can learn them as a single block. They are the most frequent verbs in the language, so they pay for themselves immediately.

Infinitive	eu form (present)	Present subjunctive
ser	sou	seja, seja, sejamos, sejam
estar	estou	esteja, esteja, estejamos, estejam
ir	vou	vá, vá, vamos, vão
saber	sei	saiba, saiba, saibamos, saibam
querer	quero	queira, queira, queiramos, queiram
dar	dou	dê, dê, demos, deem

Notice how none of these can be predicted from the eu form: sou would give a stem s-, not sej-; vou would give v-, not vá-; sei would give se-, not saib-. That is exactly what "suppletive" means — the form comes from a different root entirely. Memorize the unit: seja, esteja, vá, saiba, queira, dê.

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Memorize the six suppletives as a chant: seja — esteja — vá — saiba — queira — dê. These six are the only present subjunctives in Brazilian Portuguese you cannot derive from the eu form. Everything else follows the eu-form rule.

Espero que você esteja bem.

I hope you're well.

É melhor que ele vá embora agora.

It's better that he leave now.

Quero que ela saiba a verdade.

I want her to know the truth.

Por mais que eu queira, não posso ajudar.

As much as I'd like to, I can't help.

A close look at dar: dê and deem

Dar needs special care because of its accents, and because the spelling reform (Acordo Ortográfico de 1990) changed one of its forms.

The 3rd-person singular is dê, with a circumflex. It keeps that accent to distinguish it from the preposition de ("of/from") and because the closed vowel needs marking. The 3rd-person plural is deem — and under the AO90 spelling rules, deem has no accent. Before the reform it was written dêem; today the circumflex on double-o (and on double-e in this verb) is dropped.

Subject	dar (present subjunctive)	Note
que eu	dê	circumflex kept
que você / ele / ela	dê	circumflex kept
que nós	demos	no accent
que vocês / eles / elas	deem	AO90: no accent (old: dêem)

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dê (3sg) keeps its circumflex, but deem (3pl) drops it under the 2009 spelling reform. If you see dêem with an accent, it is pre-reform spelling. Likewise crer, ler, and ver have creem, leem, veem — all accent-free in the plural.

Tomara que eles deem uma resposta logo.

I hope they give an answer soon.

Talvez eu dê um jeito nisso amanhã.

Maybe I'll sort this out tomorrow. (dar um jeito = to fix/sort out)

Ir versus the present indicative vamos

A trap worth flagging: the nós form of the present subjunctive of ir is vamos — identical to the present indicative nós vamos ("we go"). Context tells them apart. After a subjunctive trigger, vamos is subjunctive; standing alone or as an invitation, it is indicative.

É importante que nós vamos juntos.

It's important that we go together. (subjunctive)

Nós vamos ao mercado todo sábado.

We go to the market every Saturday. (indicative)

Common Mistakes

❌ Espero que você seje feliz.

Incorrect — the form is 'seja', not 'seje'.

✅ Espero que você seja feliz.

I hope you're happy.

English speakers, hearing -e endings on -ar verbs, sometimes invent seje by analogy with fale. But ser is suppletive: the form is seja, with -a, like an -er/-ir verb.

❌ Quero que ele sabe a verdade.

Incorrect — 'sabe' is indicative; after 'quero que' you need the subjunctive.

✅ Quero que ele saiba a verdade.

I want him to know the truth.

The eu form sei tempts learners toward a stem se-, but saber is suppletive: the subjunctive is saiba.

❌ É melhor que ele vai embora.

Incorrect — 'vai' is indicative; the trigger requires the subjunctive 'vá'.

✅ É melhor que ele vá embora.

It's better that he leave now.

❌ Tomara que eles dêem uma resposta.

Incorrect under current spelling — 'deem' takes no circumflex.

✅ Tomara que eles deem uma resposta.

I hope they give an answer.

❌ Quero que você fazes isso.

Incorrect — 'fazes' is an indicative form; build the subjunctive from 'faço'.

✅ Quero que você faça isso.

I want you to do that.

Key Takeaways

Most "irregular" present subjunctives are predictable: take the eu form, drop -o, add the endings (faço → faça, tenho → tenha).
Exactly six verbs are truly suppletive: seja, esteja, vá, saiba, queira, dê. Memorize them as a unit.
Dar: dê (3sg) keeps its circumflex; deem (3pl) drops it under AO90.
Ir: the nós subjunctive vamos looks identical to the indicative — context disambiguates.

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