Imperfect Subjunctive Overview

The imperfeito do conjuntivo — the imperfect subjunctive — is the Portuguese tense that handles hypotheticals, counterfactuals, and wishes located in the past or in unreal time. If the present subjunctive is the mood of "I want you to come tomorrow" and "maybe it's raining," the imperfect subjunctive is the mood of "if I had more money" and "I wish you had been there." It is the tense that lets Portuguese speakers talk about worlds that are not this one: worlds that could have happened, that they wish had happened, or that they are imagining for the sake of argument.

It is also one of the most beautiful and regular parts of Portuguese conjugation, once you know the trick for building the forms. Every imperfect subjunctive — regular or irregular — can be derived from the 3rd person plural of the preterite. No memorizing a separate paradigm from scratch.

Why this tense exists

Portuguese marks verbs for mood — whether the speaker is describing reality (indicative), wishing or doubting (subjunctive), commanding (imperative), or hypothesizing (conditional). The subjunctive splits further into tenses to locate the wish or hypothesis in time:

• Present subjunctive — irrealis anchored in the present or future. Espero que venhas (I hope you come).
• Imperfect subjunctive — irrealis anchored in the past, or irrealis that is explicitly hypothetical / counterfactual. Queria que viesses (I wish you would come / I wanted you to come), Se tivesse tempo... (If I had time...).
• Future subjunctive — a real future condition or open possibility. Quando vieres (When you come).

The imperfect subjunctive lives in two distinct time zones. It can refer to a past wish or requirement (pediram-me que fosse — they asked me to go), or to an unreal present / future (se pudesse, iria — if I could, I would go). This double life is why learners sometimes find it slippery. Both uses spring from the same underlying idea: the verb is being pushed away from present reality, either backward in time or sideways into hypothetical space.

How the forms are built

Here is the secret of the whole tense: take the 3rd person plural of the preterite, drop the -ram, and add the imperfect subjunctive endings.

The endings are the same for every verb:

The nós form is the one that trips people up. The stem vowel gets a written accent to mark the stress, which shifts back onto that vowel because the ending is -ssemos (three syllables from the end). The accent is acute (´) when the vowel is a or i, and circumflex (^) when the vowel is e (with a closed /e/ sound).

The same rule applies no matter how irregular the verb is — as long as you know the 3pl preterite, you can build the imperfect subjunctive mechanically. Ter has tiveram → tivesse, tivéssemos. Ser/ir has foram → fosse, fôssemos. Pôr has puseram → pusesse, puséssemos. Every single imperfect subjunctive in the language comes from this one procedure.

For the full regular paradigms, see regular forms. For the irregular verbs whose preterite stems are unusual, see irregular forms.

A note on vós

The old second-person plural vós has an imperfect subjunctive form: falásseis, comêsseis, partísseis. In modern European Portuguese it has vanished from everyday speech — the plural "you" is vocês, and its verb forms pattern with the 3pl (falassem, comessem, partissem). You may see vós forms in the Bible, in old poetry, in religious rhetoric, and in some Northern regional varieties. We do not include them in the standard paradigms on this site because including them as if they were current would mislead learners.

The five uses of the imperfect subjunctive

The imperfect subjunctive appears in five broad types of sentence. Each has a dedicated page with more detail; this overview introduces them.

1. Hypothetical conditions — se + imperfect subjunctive

This is the single most important use, and the one you will meet most often in real speech. When you imagine a situation that is not the case (or is very unlikely to be the case), Portuguese uses se + imperfect subjunctive in the if-clause and a conditional in the main clause. Colloquial European Portuguese often replaces the conditional with the imperfect indicative.

This is the core structure for "what if..." thinking, and it is treated in depth on the if-clauses page.

2. Past wishes and volition

When you report a past wish or request — someone in the past wanted something — the wished-for action goes into the imperfect subjunctive (because the main verb is in the past).

This is sequence of tenses in action: if the main verb is in the past (queria, pediu, esperávamos), the dependent verb must also shift to a past form of the subjunctive — and that form is the imperfect subjunctive.

3. Politeness softeners

The imperfect subjunctive — and especially the imperfect of querer and gostar — creates one of the most useful politeness moves in Portuguese. Instead of saying quero (I want), you say queria or gostava (I'd like). This is formally the imperfect indicative, but the same logic extends to the subjunctive in subordinate clauses.

Each of these could have been expressed with quero / gosto / prefiro + present subjunctive, but the imperfect version is softer, more polite, and the default for any kind of polite request in everyday European Portuguese.

4. Sequence of tenses in reported speech and subordinate clauses

Portuguese is strict about matching the tense of the embedded verb to the tense of the main verb. When the main verb is in the past — preterite, imperfect indicative, or pluperfect — the subjunctive in the dependent clause shifts to the imperfect subjunctive.

This is why learners see the imperfect subjunctive constantly in novels and news reports: reporting the past requires this tense almost everywhere a subjunctive would otherwise appear.

5. Conjunctions with past or hypothetical meaning

The same conjunctions that trigger the present subjunctive (embora, para que, antes que, sem que, caso, a não ser que, mesmo que) trigger the imperfect subjunctive when the surrounding context is past or hypothetical.

The rule is mechanical: the mood (subjunctive) is determined by the conjunction; the tense (present vs imperfect) is determined by the time frame of the rest of the sentence.

The relationship to the conditional

The imperfect subjunctive and the conditional often come in pairs. Hypothetical sentences use se + imperfect subjunctive in the condition and the conditional in the result. This pairing is so automatic that you should learn them together.

Both sentences are standard European Portuguese. The imperfect-indicative version (aprendia instead of aprenderia) is the more common choice in everyday speech; the conditional form is more typical in writing. Learners should recognize both and feel comfortable producing at least one. See the if-clauses page for the full treatment of this pattern.

Signature forms to recognize

Here are the imperfect subjunctive forms of the ten most common irregular verbs, at first person singular. Seeing these often will anchor your ear:

Notice ser and ir share the same form — fosse. This is one of the great traps of Portuguese: context alone tells you whether fosse means "were" or "went." See irregular forms for the full paradigms and more discussion.

A compound relative: the pluperfect subjunctive

For actions further in the past — counterfactuals about what would have happened — Portuguese uses a compound tense, the pluperfect subjunctive (mais-que-perfeito do conjuntivo): tivesse + past participle. This is built on the imperfect subjunctive of ter, so learning the imperfect subjunctive unlocks this compound automatically.

We treat this compound tense on its own page; it is worth meeting here only so you know where the imperfect subjunctive eventually leads.

Register and everyday use

The imperfect subjunctive is a fully everyday tense in European Portuguese. You hear se eu tivesse, se calhasse, queria que, gostava que constantly in conversation — on buses, in cafés, in phone calls to family. It is not a formal or written-only tense. If anything, the politeness uses (queria que, gostava que, preferia que) make it more frequent in polite speech than in writing.

What you will rarely hear in modern European Portuguese is the old vós forms (tivésseis, fôsseis) and very formal periphrases with the pluperfect subjunctive (houvesse de + infinitive). These are survivals from older literature and liturgy. We flag them on the irregular-forms page so you can recognize them, but you do not need to produce them.

How English expresses what the imperfect subjunctive expresses

English rarely has a dedicated form for this territory. Instead, it uses:

• Past tense as a counterfactual marker: if I had, if I were, if I could.
• Modal auxiliaries: would, could, might.
• Wish + past: I wish I knew, I wish you were here.

Portuguese maps these cleanly onto the imperfect subjunctive:

• If I had → Se eu tivesse
• If I were you → Se eu fosse tu
• I wish you were here → Gostava que estivesses aqui
• I wish I knew → Quem me dera saber / Oxalá soubesse

The mapping is not one-to-one, but it is systematic. The imperfect subjunctive in Portuguese always corresponds to English constructions that feel "unreal," "hypothetical," or "polite-distant."

Common Mistakes

After se with a hypothetical or counterfactual meaning, the verb must be in the imperfect subjunctive. Se tenho only works for real present conditions ("If I have money on me right now...").

A past main verb (queria, pediu, disse) pulls the dependent subjunctive back into the imperfect. Estude is present subjunctive; after queria, it must be estudasse.

The imperfect indicative (era) describes habitual or ongoing past; it cannot express a hypothetical present. For "if I were rich," use fosse.

When a past main verb coordinates two requests, both embedded verbs take the imperfect subjunctive. Do not slip into an infinitive or indicative for the second one.

Gostava que is the polite alternative to gosto que, and it triggers the imperfect subjunctive rather than the present subjunctive — because the main verb is itself in the imperfect.

Key takeaways

• The imperfect subjunctive is built from the 3rd person plural of the preterite, minus -ram, plus -sse / -sses / -sse / -ssemos / -ssem. The nós form takes a stress accent on the stem vowel.
• It covers five territories: hypothetical conditions, past wishes, politeness softeners, sequence of tenses after past verbs, and conjunctions in past or hypothetical contexts.
• Se + imperfect subjunctive
  • conditional (or imperfect indicative) is the core hypothetical structure.
• Ser and ir share the same form: fosse. Context decides.
• The imperfect subjunctive is an everyday tense — you will hear it constantly in casual speech, not just in formal contexts.

Next: learn the full regular forms, then the irregular forms, and finally cement the hypothetical pattern on the if-clauses page.