But in case you want your Portuguese to go anywhere, you need to know verb conjugations. Verbs = Action. There’s no avoiding them. They seem complex, if not scary, only when you open a grammar book, so let’s leave that aside for now.


If verbs were the three little pigs they’d be called morAR, comER and abrIR.


One day they go out to build each a house.


morAR built each part either alone or with help:

morO - he built on his own

morAS - you helpt him out

morA - his friend gave him a hand

morAMOS - we all jumped in

morAM - his two friends finished things off

comER did the exact same thing:

comO - started alone

comES - accepted your help

comE - his girlfriend showed up to help

comEMOS - we all helped with this part

comEM - his two brothers did the finishing touches

abrIR aproached it this way:

abrO - laid out the foundation by himself

abrES - asked you to take over

abrE - his best friend showed up

abrIMOS - we all took turns to help

abrEM - he took a break, but the others continued


There’s a million different ways to go about verb conjugations in Portuguese. To me, they’re the epitome of logic. Keep the beginning, notice the patterns of the endings for regular verbs (visually and sound-wise) and use the persons in sentences that speak to your reality.

For irregular verbs, have a ‘big bad wolf’ attitude and go after the easy prey, meaning, the verbs you encounter the most in your daily life.


 If you have enjoyed this quick lesson and would like to learn more Portuguese outside of the box, then please contact Catarina from The Language Unschool - catarina@thelanguageunschool.com