VERBS – part 01

Before introducing some verbs for basic survival in Portuguese, take a look at the English-Portuguese Pronoun Table bellow and keep that on mind!

• There is no relative to the subject IT in Portuguese, although we sometimes use the demonstrative pronouns isso and aquilo to refer to this or that thing.

• Portuguese has a special pronoun form, which is quite informal, but an extremely common substitute for nós (we). We say A GENTE and it means much more than just a pronoun. A gente means “the people”, but t refers to me and you and who else is in the place or in the action with us. Grammatically, it takes a third person singular when conjugating a verb.

In Portuguese, as it happens to some other languages, we have to conjugate verbs in accordance to the subject/pronouns we refer to.

Here is a quick chart with the conjugation in use of some verbs we are going to study in this lesson. The verbs are in Simple Present Tense – PRESENTE SIMPLES:

Pay attention to the following sentences:

We can also use the verb CHAMAR (to call) in order to ask and answer the same question:

Literally it would be translated something like: how are you called?
I call myself Paula … or … my name is Paula

Read this last sentence again. Note that, as we conjugate the verbs, we don’t need to always mention the pronouns.

In most cases, there are no feminine or masculine articles before names of cities and states. So we say:

BUT there are some exceptions:

We say: