Preterite of Dizer

The verb dizer (to say / to tell) is one of the most common verbs in Portuguese, and its preterite is thoroughly irregular. The stem changes from diz- to diss-, placing it in the "strong" preterite family alongside fazer, trazer, and ter. One striking feature sets dizer apart from every other strong preterite: the eu and ele/você forms are identical -- both are simply disse.

Conjugation

The entire paradigm is built on the stem diss-. The endings are the standard strong preterite set: -e, -este, -e, -emos, (-estes), -eram. Nothing here can be predicted from the infinitive -- these forms must be memorized.

Reporting what someone said

The most frequent use of dizer in the preterite is indirect speech -- reporting what someone said.

When quoting someone directly, dizer introduces the quotation followed by a colon.

Indirect speech and tense shifts

When reporting what someone said, the clause after disse que often shifts to a past tense -- typically the imperfect or the pluperfect. This mirrors the "backshift" found in English indirect speech.

This shift is not obligatory in colloquial speech -- you will sometimes hear the original tense preserved -- but it is the standard pattern and the one to learn first.

Disse = "I said" and "he/she said"

This identical eu/ele form deserves extra attention because it is unique among the strong preterites. Compare:

In fact, dizer is not entirely alone -- trazer and querer also have identical eu/ele forms. But dizer is far more common than either, so you will encounter the ambiguity most often with disse. Portuguese speakers resolve it effortlessly through context, but as a learner it helps to use the pronoun when the subject is not obvious.

Quer dizer in the past

The expression quer dizer (it means / that is to say) shifts to quis dizer in the preterite. This is useful when asking about the meaning of something that was said or written.

Compounds of dizer

Verbs built on dizer follow exactly the same irregular pattern -- just add the prefix to the diss- stem.

The -zer family in the preterite

The three common -zer verbs -- fazer, dizer, and trazer -- are all irregular in the preterite, but each changes its stem in a completely different way. There is no shared pattern to extract.

Dizer with indirect-object pronouns

In European Portuguese, dizer is typically used with an indirect-object pronoun marking the person told (me, te, lhe, nos, vos, lhes). In enclitic position (the default for affirmative main clauses), the pronoun attaches to the preterite form with a hyphen.

Note the position shift in the last example: after the question word o que é que, the pronoun te moves before the verb (proclisis), the normal pattern in EP for questions and negations.

Common mistakes

1. Applying regular -er endings. Forms like dizeu or dizeram (with the original diz- stem) do not exist in the preterite. The stem changes entirely to diss-, and the endings are the strong preterite set.

2. Inventing forms like dizi. This likely comes from mixing the regular -ir preterite ending (parti) with dizer. The correct eu form is disse, not dizi or dizei.

3. Forgetting that disse covers both persons. If you write disse in a sentence without a clear subject, a reader may not know whether you mean "I said" or "he/she said." Add the pronoun when the context does not make it obvious.

4. Leaving dizer without its indirect object. In EP, disse usually carries a pronoun marking who was told. A bare disse que... can be fine when the listener is contextually obvious, but disse-me que..., disse-lhe que..., and disseram-nos que... are the everyday default.

For the full preterite system, see Preterite Overview. For the present-tense forms of this verb, see Present Indicative of Fazer and Dizer. For another strong preterite with a similar ending pattern, see Preterite of Ter.