Presente
What is happening now, habits, and general truths.
- eu descubro
- você / ele / ela / a gente descobre
- nós descobrimos
- vocês / eles / elas descobrem
to discover
Stem-changing verb, o → u, gerund descobrindo, past participle descoberto.
Conjugated like cobrir
A gente, the everyday we, takes the same form as você.
Underlined: the stem is not the infinitive’s.
Enough to talk about the present, the past, and the future.
What is happening now, habits, and general truths.
The everyday past for a finished action.
The spoken future for plans and coming events: ir plus the infinitive.
Past habits, descriptions, and ongoing background.
What is happening right now: estar plus the gerund.
What was going on at a moment in the past: estava plus the gerund.
Orders and advice, as written; the subject in parentheses is not spoken. In everyday speech much of Brazil says fala for fale.
Telling someone not to do something: não plus the present subjunctive.
A past action completed before another past action: tinha plus the participle.
The future of written Portuguese; speech uses ir plus the infinitive instead.
Polite requests, wishes, and hypotheses: “would …”.
Something repeated or still going on up to now: tenho estudado, I have been studying. Not a finished past.
After wishes, doubts, feelings, and phrases like para que or talvez.
Hypotheses with se, polite wishes, and the subjunctive in the past.
A possible future after se, quando, or assim que: quando eu puder.
An infinitive with its own subject, after para, antes de, or sem.
Regrets and hypotheses about the past: se eu tivesse sabido…
What would have happened: “would have …”.
The subjunctive for an action already completed: espero que tenha chegado.
A future action completed first: quando eu tiver terminado.
An action finished before a future moment, or a guess about the past.
The pluperfect of literature and formal writing; speech says tinha plus the participle.