Breakdown of Se eu soubesse que era um filme de terror, não o teria escolhido.
Questions & Answers about Se eu soubesse que era um filme de terror, não o teria escolhido.
Soubesse is in the past (imperfect) subjunctive, which is the standard form after se when you are talking about an unreal / counterfactual condition in the past.
- Se eu soubesse… ≈ If I had known… (but in reality, I didn’t know).
- Using sabia (imperfect indicative) or soube (preterite) would suggest a real situation, not a hypothetical one, so they don’t fit this "if I had known" meaning.
Patterns like:
- Se eu soubesse, não o teria escolhido.
If I had known, I wouldn’t have chosen it.
are the normal way to express these "if X had happened, Y would have happened" ideas in Portuguese.
Soubesse is:
- Tense: past (also called imperfect)
- Mood: subjunctive
- Person: 1st person singular (eu)
It comes from the verb saber.
Formation rule for the past subjunctive in Portuguese:
- Take the 3rd person plural of the preterite (simple past):
eles souberam - Remove -ram: soube-
- Add the subjunctive endings: -sse, -sses, -sse, -ssemos, -ssem
So you get:
- se eu soubesse
- se tu soubesses
- se ele/ela soubesse
- se nós soubéssemos
- se eles soubessem
In this sentence, Se eu soubesse corresponds to English If I had known.
- The combination Se eu soubesse…, não o teria escolhido = If I had known…, I wouldn’t have chosen it.
Portuguese often uses this past subjunctive + conditional pairing where English uses past perfect (had known) + would have…
Because era (imperfect indicative) presents the fact that it is/was a horror movie as a real fact, independent of the condition.
The situation is:
- The film actually is a horror movie (this is true).
- The only unreal part is that the speaker did not know it at the time.
So:
- Se eu soubesse que era um filme de terror…
If I had known that it was a horror movie…
The verb saber usually takes the indicative in its completive clause when you are talking about factual information:
sabia que era, soube que era, se eu soubesse que era, etc.
Using fosse would drag the "being a horror film" into the hypothetical sphere, which slightly changes the nuance (see next question).
It’s not strictly wrong, but it is less natural here and sounds more marked or literary.
- Se eu soubesse que era um filme de terror…
→ Neutral, standard: the fact it is a horror film is treated as real. - Se eu soubesse que fosse um filme de terror…
→ Can sound like you are putting the classification itself into the same hypothetical frame, or treating it more distantly / theoretically.
In everyday European Portuguese, speakers strongly prefer que era in this specific kind of sentence, because the real-world fact is that it is a horror movie; only your knowledge of that fact is counterfactual.
Teria escolhido is the conditional perfect (also called "past conditional"):
- ter in the conditional (teria)
- the past participle escolhido
It corresponds to English "would have chosen" (here negated: "would not have chosen"):
- não o teria escolhido
= I wouldn’t have chosen it
Both are grammatically correct but they express different time frames:
Não o teria escolhido
→ Past conditional; refers to an action that did not happen in the past.
"I wouldn’t have chosen it (back then)."Não o escolheria
→ Simple conditional; more like a general or future hypothetical.
"I wouldn’t choose it (if that situation came up)."
In your sentence, we’re talking specifically about a decision that was already made in the past, so não o teria escolhido fits better.
- O is a direct object pronoun meaning "it".
- Here, it refers back to um filme de terror (masculine singular noun filme → pronoun o).
- In European Portuguese, clitic pronouns like o, a, os, as normally come:
- before the verb when there is a trigger for proclisis, and
- after the verb otherwise.
The word não (negation) forces the pronoun to come before the verb, so we must say:
- não o teria escolhido
and not não teria o escolhido or não teria escolhido o (those are not standard in European Portuguese).
In European Portuguese, with não, the pronoun must come before the verb:
- ✅ não o teria escolhido (correct, natural)
- ❌ não teria escolhido-o (wrong in EP)
- ❌ não teria-o escolhido (wrong in EP)
Post‑verbal placement like escolhê-lo, teria-o escolhido happens without triggers such as não, que, se, quando, etc., and is most common in written/formal EP, for example:
- Eu tê-lo-ia escolhido, se soubesse… (very formal/literary)
But once you add não, you go back to proclisis: não o teria escolhido.
Que is the complementizer (similar to English "that") introducing a subordinate clause that works as the object of soubesse:
- soubesse que era um filme de terror
→ "knew that it was a horror movie"
In this structure:
- You cannot drop que in Portuguese.
Se eu soubesse era um filme de terror is ungrammatical.
Some verbs allow you sometimes to omit que in very informal speech, but saber que + clause normally keeps the que.
Yes, that’s perfectly natural in Portuguese.
- Portuguese is a pro‑drop language: subject pronouns like eu, tu, ele can often be omitted because the verb ending already tells you who the subject is.
- So both are fine:
- Se eu soubesse que era um filme de terror, não o teria escolhido.
- Se soubesse que era um filme de terror, não o teria escolhido.
Including eu can add a bit of emphasis on I, but grammatically both are correct.
Yes, you can change the order without changing the meaning:
- Se eu soubesse que era um filme de terror, não o teria escolhido.
- Não o teria escolhido se eu soubesse que era um filme de terror.
Both are correct.
The comma is usually used when the se‑clause comes first, and often omitted when it comes second, but both versions with or without comma are commonly accepted in ordinary writing:
- Não o teria escolhido, se eu soubesse que era um filme de terror. (also possible)
Yes, mainly with pronouns and style, though your original sentence is perfectly fine in European Portuguese.
In European Portuguese, the most natural version is exactly:
- Se eu soubesse que era um filme de terror, não o teria escolhido.
In Brazilian Portuguese, you might often hear variants like:
- Se eu soubesse que era um filme de terror, não teria escolhido.
(dropping the object pronoun and letting context supply “it”) - Or more colloquially:
Se eu soubesse que era um filme de terror, não teria escolhido ele.
In European Portuguese, não teria escolhido ele sounds wrong or very marked; you normally use the clitic pronoun (o) for a direct object without preposition.
You can, but it is much less common and sounds more formal or slightly odd in everyday speech.
- Se eu soubesse que era um filme de terror…
→ This is the standard, idiomatic way to say If I had known that it was a horror movie… - Se eu tivesse sabido que era um filme de terror…
→ Grammatically possible (literally "If I had had knowledge that…"), but not the usual choice.
In practice, for this meaning, learners should strongly prefer:
- Se eu soubesse que era um filme de terror, não o teria escolhido.