Brazilian Portuguese Grammar

Primitive & derived tenses

Tempos verbais primitivos e derivados

Some verb tenses derive from other tenses (called primitive) by simply changing their spelling or by removing the primitive verb-tense endings and adding verb-tense endings to all persons. By learning these rules, your verb conjugation skills will become much better. However, these rules mostly apply to regular verbs, which follow patterns. Unfortunately, they might not apply to irregular verbs, which you need to know by heart.

Primitive Tense	Derived Tense	How do you do the derivation?	Endings to be added
Primitive Tense	Derived Tense	How do you do the derivation?	1st	2nd	3rd
1st person singular, present indicative	All persons of the present subjunctive	Remove the final vowel of the 1st person singular of the present indicative and add the endings.	e	a	a
			es	as	as
			e	a	a
			emos	amos	amos
			eis	ais	ais
			em	am	am
2nd persons singular and plural of the present indicative	2nd persons singular and plural of the affirmative imperative	Remove the s of the 2nd persons singular and plural of the present indicative and use the resulting form.
			a	e	e
			e	a	a
			emos	amos	amos
	The other persons come from the present subjunctive	Use the same forms	emos	amos	amos
			ai	ei	i
			em	am	am
Present subjunctive	Negative imperative	Use the same forms	es	as	as
			e	a	a
			emos	amos	amos
			ei	ais	ais
			em	am	am
			*Remember to use não* in the Negative Imperative**