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Portuguese phrases, by meaning
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Common questions about Portuguese
What's covered on this Portuguese page?
Twenty-two functional categories with Portuguese examples: tense (presente, pretérito perfeito, imperfeito, mais-que-perfeito, futuro, condicional), modality (poder, dever, ter de, querer), negation with não, questions, ser versus estar, the personal infinitive (para tu chegares, para nós sabermos), the present and future subjunctive, comparison (mais...do que), and 14 others. All glossed with verb labels.
When do I use ser versus estar?
Ser handles inherent or defining qualities (sou brasileiro, é alta, são amigos), occupations (é médico), and identity. Estar handles temporary states (estou cansado), locations (a chave está aqui), and ongoing conditions (está chovendo). The classic pair: ser feliz 'to be a happy person by nature' versus estar feliz 'to be happy right now'. Both translate as 'to be' in English; Portuguese keeps them distinct.
What is the 'personal infinitive' and why does it exist?
Portuguese is the only major Romance language that conjugates the infinitive itself. Para chegares cedo 'for you to arrive early' (with -es marking the second person), para chegarmos cedo 'for us to arrive early' (with -mos for first person plural). It mostly appears after prepositions or in clauses without an explicit conjunction, where Spanish or Italian would force a subjunctive. Learners pick it up fast because the endings match the future-subjunctive endings.
Why does Portuguese have a future subjunctive when most Romance languages don't?
It survived from Old Iberian and stayed productive. It appears after se 'if', quando 'when', enquanto 'while', logo que 'as soon as' when the clause refers to a future event: quando eu chegar te aviso 'when I arrive, I'll let you know'. The verb form often looks identical to the personal infinitive but distributes differently. Examples in the Hypotheticals and Temporal Connections sections show it at work.
Is this Brazilian or European Portuguese?
The structures cover both, with everyday phrasings preferred over forms that read as too region-specific. The two varieties share most grammar but diverge meaningfully in pronoun position (Brazilian Portuguese fronts pronouns, European postposes them with hyphens: me ajuda versus ajuda-me), in some vocabulary, and in pronunciation. Where the divergence is grammatical and visible, the example notes both.
Sources for Portuguese
The grammatical descriptions on this page are informed by the following published reference and descriptive grammars. Grammatical facts themselves are not subject to copyright; the scholars who documented them deserve attribution.
- Raposo, Eduardo Buzaglo Paiva et al. (2013). Gramática do Português. Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
- Cunha, Celso & Cintra, Lindley (2017). Nova Gramática do Português Contemporâneo, 7th ed. Lisbon: Lexikon.
- Mateus, Maria Helena Mira et al. (2003). Gramática da Língua Portuguesa, 6th ed. Lisbon: Caminho.
- Perini, Mário A. (2002). Modern Portuguese: A Reference Grammar. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Thomas, Earl W. (1969). The Syntax of Spoken Brazilian Portuguese. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.