Breakdown of À tarde, eu assistia a um filme no cinema.
eu
I
um
a / an / some (all forms)
em
in / on / at
o cinema
the cinema
o filme
the movie
à tarde
in the afternoon
assistir a
to attend / to watch
Questions & Answers about À tarde, eu assistia a um filme no cinema.
Why does the verb assistir become assistia here?
Assistir is a regular -ir verb. In the Pretérito Imperfeito, regular -er and -ir verbs share the exact same endings. For eu (and ele/ela/você), you drop the -ir and add -ia, giving us assistia.
How do we know this means "I used to watch" instead of just "I watched"?
The Imperfeito tense (assistia) is used to talk about habits, routines, or repeated actions in the past. Translating it as "used to watch" perfectly captures that this was a past habit. If you only watched a movie once on a specific afternoon, you would use the Pretérito Perfeito instead: assisti.
Why is there an a between assistia and um filme?
In Portuguese, the verb assistir requires the preposition a when it means "to watch" or "to attend" (assistir a). This is a common trap for English speakers! If you leave out the a, assistir means "to help" or "to assist" instead.
Refresher: Why does À tarde have a backwards accent mark?
That grave accent shows that two words have merged. It is a contraction of the preposition a (in/at) and the feminine definite article a (the) from a tarde. We use à tarde as a set phrase to mean "in the afternoon".
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