In short

The present indicative is the workhorse of Portuguese: it covers what you do now, what you do regularly, and general truths. Portuguese has no separate “I speak / I am speaking / I do speak” - the single form falo is all three. Learn the three regular patterns here - verbs whose infinitive ends in -ar, -er or -ir - and you can already conjugate the large majority of Portuguese verbs. And because the ending itself tells you who is acting, you normally drop the subject pronoun (Lesson 3): falo on its own means “I speak”.

The rule

The three conjugations

Every Portuguese verb belongs to one of three groups, named after the last two letters of its infinitive:

• 1st conjugation, -ar - by far the largest and the one most new verbs join: falar (to speak), morar (to live), trabalhar (to work), estudar (to study), comprar (to buy), gostar (to like).
• 2nd conjugation, -er: comer (to eat), beber (to drink), aprender (to learn), escrever (to write), viver (to live).
• 3rd conjugation, -ir: partir (to leave), abrir (to open), decidir (to decide), dividir (to divide), assistir (to attend/watch).

To conjugate, take the infinitive, drop the two-letter ending to get the stem (fal-, com-, part-), and add the present-tense ending for the person you need.

The endings, person by person

The eu form ends in -o in all three conjugations, and the nós form ends in -mos in all three - so those two persons are almost free once you know one verb. The rest follow the group:

• -ar verbs take -o, -as, -a, -amos, -ais, -am.
• -er verbs take -o, -es, -e, -emos, -eis, -em.
• -ir verbs take -o, -es, -e, -imos, -is, -em.

Notice that -er and -ir verbs share four of their six endings; they differ only in the nós form (comemos vs partimos) and the archaic vós form (comeis vs partis). Remember from Lesson 3 that você, o senhor / a senhora and ele / ela all take the third-person ending (fala, come, parte), and that vós has died out in everyday Portugal - use vocês for “you all”.

One present, three English tenses

Estudo português can mean “I study Portuguese”, “I am studying Portuguese”, or “I do study Portuguese”, all at once. Portuguese does have a dedicated way to stress an action in progress (estar a + infinitivo, Lesson 9), but the plain present already carries habits, schedules and current facts, so do not reach for a progressive just because English happens to use “-ing”.

gostar de - saying what you like

Gostar is a perfectly regular -ar verb (gosto, gostas, gosta…), but it is never used bare: in Portuguese you like of something, so gostar is always followed by de.

• Gosto de café. (I like coffee.)
• Gostas de viajar? (Do you like travelling? - de followed by an infinitive.)

Remember from Lesson 2 that de contracts with a following definite article: de + o = do, de + a = da, and so on - so “I like the coffee” is Gosto do café, never gosto de o café.

achar que - giving an opinion

Achar (regular -ar: acho, achas, acha…) followed by que is the everyday way to introduce an opinion, exactly like English “I think that…”: Acho que sim (I think so), Acho que é caro (I think it is expensive). Keep acho que in your pocket - it is how Portuguese speakers hedge and give a view.

Forms & patterns

The present-tense endings, side by side:

The same three verbs written out in full:

The vós forms (falais, comeis, partis) are given only for completeness; they are archaic or regional (Lesson 3). In real European Portuguese, use vocês + the third-person plural form (falam, comem, partem).

Examples

Common mistakes

• eu falo, eu como, eu estudo -> falo, como, estudo - drop the subject pronoun (Lesson 3); the ending already tells you it is “I”, and repeating eu sounds heavy and foreign.
• gosto café -> gosto de café - gostar always takes de; you like of something. Leaving out de is simply ungrammatical.
• gosto de o café -> gosto do café - de contracts with the article: de + o = do, de + a = da (Lesson 2). The uncontracted form is wrong.
• tu partis, nós partemos -> tu partes, nós partimos - the -ir group differs from -er only at nós (-imos) and the old vós (-is); everywhere else the two match.
• eu fala, ela falas -> eu falo, ela fala - match the ending to the person; você / ele / ela all take the bare third-person form (-a or -e), never the -s of tu.
• eu comeco -> começo - começar is regular, but every present form keeps the ç (começo, começas, começa…) to preserve its soft /s/ sound before o and a (the hard/soft spelling system, treated in the reading & pronunciation guide). This is spelling, not a change of ending.

Tips

• Learn the infinitive ending together with every new verb - -ar, -er or -ir is what tells you which pattern to apply.
• Master the eu (-o) and nós (-mos) forms first: they look the same across all three conjugations, so you are already a third of the way into any regular verb.
• Treat -er and -ir as near-twins - identical except at nós (comemos vs partimos). If you know one, you almost know the other.
• Make the plain present your all-purpose “now and usually” tense, and save estar a + infinitivo (Lesson 9) for when you truly need to stress “right at this moment”.
• Bank gosto de… and acho que… as ready-made openers - they let you say what you like and what you think from day one.
• In Brazil: the ordinary way to say “I am doing” is the gerund (estou comendo, estou estudando), where European Portuguese uses estar a + infinitivo (estou a comer). The plain present forms in the tables above are the same in both varieties.