Conjugation in practice

Conjugation is the skeleton of the Portuguese sentence: it is where person, tense, mood and aspect are written. Knowing what a verb means is of little use if you cannot produce parti, partira, partisse or partires at the right moment. The good news is that the overwhelming majority of verbs are regular and fit into three moulds; the hard part is concentrated in a handful of very common verbs. This article offers a training method and points you to the Conjugator, which generates the full set of forms for any verb.

The three conjugations

Every Portuguese verb belongs to one of three classes, defined by the theme vowel of the infinitive: -ar (the first conjugation, by far the largest and the only one still productive), -er (the second) and -ir (the third). The verb pôr and its derivatives (compor, depor) are a remnant of a fourth Latin class and are treated separately.

Conjugating a regular verb means separating the stem (the invariable part) from the ending (which carries person, number, tense and mood) and applying the endings of the matching mould.

A paradigm to internalise

Before memorising lists, it pays to lock in one model verb from each conjugation in the present indicative — the highest-yield tense and the base from which others are derived. From there, most of the work is pattern recognition.

eu	falo
tu	falas
ele/ela	fala
nós	falamos
vós	falais
eles/elas	falam

eu	como
tu	comes
ele/ela	come
nós	comemos
vós	comeis
eles/elas	comem

Notice that partir (3rd) differs from comer only in the first and second persons plural (partimos, partis), which sharply reduces the memory load.

Irregulars first — but the right ones

Trying to memorise every irregular verb at once is demoralising and ineffective. The rewarding strategy is the reverse: the most irregular verbs are also the most frequent, so they are learned early and drilled through natural repetition. Begin with ser, estar, ter, haver, ir, fazer, dizer, ver, vir, dar, poder, querer and saber. Master these thirteen and you cover an enormous slice of spoken Portuguese.

Many “irregular” verbs are irregular at a single point only. Pedir, medir and ouvir, for instance, are regular except in the first person of the present (peço, meço, ouço), which then propagates through the whole present subjunctive (peça, meça, ouça). Knowing where the irregularity sits saves half the work.

Tenses spring from the stem

Once the present is fixed, several tenses follow derivation rules that make the system predictable. The imperfect, the future and the conditional of regular verbs take fixed endings; the subjunctive keys off the first person of the present. Training these links is more useful than memorising each form in isolation.

How to use the Conjugator

The Conjugator shows any verb across all tenses and moods, including the personal infinitive, a form unique to Portuguese among the Romance languages. Use it actively, not just to look things up:

1. Predict before you peek. Write the form you think is right, then confirm. A conscious error sticks better than passive reading.
2. Work by families. Once you have conjugated one verb, do the others that follow the same pattern (falar → trabalhar, estudar; fazer → desfazer, satisfazer).
3. Isolate the weak tense. Almost everyone stumbles on the subjunctive and the irregular preterites; concentrate your repetitions there.
4. Say it aloud. Conjugation is also an articulatory habit: hearing yourself speeds up automation.

Pitfalls to watch

Good conjugation is not learned in one sitting; it is won through repeated exposure and attentive correction. Fix the three moulds, tackle the thirteen essential irregulars, and let the rest settle in with practice.