Breakdown of Nós assistíamos aos concertos da banda.
de
of / from / by (means of transport) / wearing (attire)
nós
we
o concerto
the concert
assistir a
to attend / to watch
a banda
the band
Questions & Answers about Nós assistíamos aos concertos da banda.
How do we know assistíamos means "used to attend" instead of just "attended"?
Assistíamos is in the Pretérito Imperfeito (Imperfect tense), which we use for ongoing, repeated, or habitual past actions—like things you "used to" do. It comes from the regular -ir verb assistir. For the nós (we) form, we drop the -ir and add -íamos. If it were a single, completed event ("we attended once"), we would use the Pretérito Perfeito: Nós assistimos.
Wait, doesn't assistir mean "to assist" or "to help"?
It can, but it is a "false friend"! When assistir is followed by the preposition a, it means "to attend" an event or "to watch" something (like a concert or a movie). If you want to say "to help", you would typically use the verb ajudar instead.
Where does the word aos come from?
Aos is a contraction of the preposition a (to/at) and the masculine plural article os (the). Because the verb assistir requires the preposition a when meaning "to attend", and concertos (concerts) is a masculine plural noun, they combine: a + os = aos.
Why is there an accent mark on the í in assistíamos?
The accent mark shows you exactly where to put the stress when pronouncing the word. In Portuguese, words ending in -mos usually have the stress on the second-to-last syllable. Since the stress in assistíamos falls on the í (the third-to-last syllable), it breaks the normal rule and must have a written accent. All nós forms in the Imperfect tense have this accent!
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