Subject-Verb Agreement

In Portuguese, every conjugated verb must agree with its subject in person (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) and number (singular or plural). This is not optional decoration -- it is the core mechanism that makes the language work. Because European Portuguese drops subject pronouns so freely, the verb ending is often the only thing telling your listener who is doing the action. Get the agreement wrong and the sentence points at the wrong person.

The basic principle

The ending of the verb changes to match whoever or whatever is performing the action. Here is falar (to speak) in the present tense, showing all five persons used in modern EP:

Each ending is distinct. When you say falamos, the listener already knows the subject is "we" -- no pronoun required.

Agreement with você and vocês

This is one of the trickiest points in EP for English speakers. The words você and vocês mean "you," but they take third-person verb forms -- the same forms used with ele/ela and eles/elas.

The mismatch between meaning and grammar is simply a fact of the language. Você is historically derived from Vossa Mercê (Your Grace), a third-person expression, and it has kept that grammatical behavior. For more on this distinction, see Subject Pronouns.

Agreement with a gente

In spoken EP, a gente is an extremely common informal replacement for nós. It means "we," but it takes a third-person singular verb -- the same form as ele/ela.

Both sentences mean the same thing. The difference is register: a gente is casual, nós is neutral or formal. The agreement rule is absolute -- a gente always takes the singular, never the plural.

Compound subjects

When the subject consists of two or more nouns or pronouns joined by e (and), the verb takes the plural:

When a compound subject mixes different grammatical persons, the verb defaults to the lowest-numbered person present:

In practice, the combination of 2nd + 3rd person is rare in modern EP. Speakers usually rephrase with vocês: Tu e a Ana estudam juntas.

Collective nouns

Words like a equipa (the team), o grupo (the group), and a maioria (the majority) are grammatically singular in EP. Unlike English, which often treats collectives as plural, EP keeps the verb singular:

Tricky agreement patterns

Several common structures trip up learners. Pay close attention to these:

Inverted subject order -- When the verb comes before the subject, agreement still follows the subject, not word order:

Relative clauses with que -- The verb in the relative clause agrees with the antecedent, not with que itself:

Expressions of quantity -- With structures like a maioria de + plural noun, EP accepts both singular and plural verb agreement, though singular is slightly more formal:

Existential haver -- The verb haver meaning "there is/are" is always singular in standard Portuguese, regardless of what follows:

Common mistakes to avoid

Here is a summary of the agreement errors that catch learners most often:

Building the habit

Subject-verb agreement is not something you memorize once and forget. It runs through every sentence you say or write. The best way to internalize it is to practice conjugating verbs with different subjects until the correct form feels automatic. Start with regular -ar verbs (see The Three Verb Classes), then expand to -er and -ir patterns. Once the regular endings are second nature, the agreement rules for você, a gente, and compound subjects will fall into place naturally. For a full overview of how conjugation works, see Conjugation Basics.