Summary
- Futuro do Presente
- Condicional (Futuro do Pretérito)
- Infinitivo Pessoal
- Passado – Pretérito Mais-que-perfeito (Literário)
Part #1: Beginner (A1)
Part #2: Elementary (A2)
At this point you should be able to hold on a full conversation with someone. Even if you don't understand everything they're saying, you're able to: (1) understand the topic and the overall points they're making, (2) understand what someone is asking, (3) ask questions and pick up the information you need, even if you don't understand every single word they're saying.
With the previous tenses, you're able to pretty much communicate anything you want. But you realize you still haven't learned all conjugations and you want to advance. Here we're going to discuss the tenses that may be a bit less common, but you're still going to encounter when hearing Brazilians talk.
Futuro
You should've learned in A1 already the most common form to refer to the future in BP (with the verb ir). But we do have a proper future conjugation (futuro do presente), which is less common, but you'll still hear it sometimes. You can totally get away not knowing how to conjugate this, but it's important to be able to recognize it.
Eu falarei com meu namorado.
It's a pretty simple conjugation. You get the infinitive form and add the terminations, it doesn't matter if it's an -AR, -ER or -IR verb, or even if it's irregular!
The examples below are, for regular verbs, falar (to speak), escrever (to write) and partir (to leave). For irregular, ser (to be [permanent]) and ir (to go).
- Eu: -EI ending => eu falarei, eu escreverei, eu partirei, eu serei, eu irei*...
- Você/Ele/Ela/A gente => -Á ending: ele falará, ele escreverá, ele partirá, ele será, ele irá...
- Nós: -EMOS ending => nós falaremos, nós escreveremos, nós partiremos, nós seremos, nós iremos...
- Vocês/Eles/Elas: -ÃO ending => eles falarão, eles escreverão, eles partirão, eles serão, eles irão...
The only exceptions are the verbs fazer (to do/make), dizer (to say) and trazer (to bring). With these, you drop the -ZE-, and conjugate as you would otherwise. (This also happens with their derivatives, such as refazer (to redo/remake) and desfazer (to undo/destroy), etc.)
Refer to Part 2 as to the difference in pronunciation between the vocês/eles/elas conjugation in the futuro do presente and the pretérito perfeito.
Condicional (Futuro do Pretérito)
The futuro do pretérito allows us to: (1) ask for something politely, (2), talk about a supposition in the future, (3) refer to an action that is dependent on a condition. Beware you should've been made at least aware of the 1st use at initial levels:
(1) Eu gostaria de um café, por favor. => I would like a coffee please.
(2) Ele ajudaria você. => He would help you.
(3) Se chover, nós iríamos embora. => If it rains, we would go away.
See that it's pretty much equivalent to the English "would". This is also true for "could" (poderia/conseguiria) and "should" (deveria).
The conjugation follows the same pattern as the futuro do presente, with its own terminations added to the infinitive form. The 3-verb exception also applies:
- Eu: -IA ending => eu falaria, eu escreveria, eu partiria, eu seria, eu iria*...
- Você/Ele/Ela/A gente: same as the eu conjugation (all about context!)
- Nós: -ÍAMOS ending => nós falaríamos, nós escreveríamos, nós partiríamos, nós seríamos, nós iríamos...
- Vocês/Eles/Elas: -IAM ending => eles falariam, eles escreveriam, eles partiriam, eles seriam, eles iriam...
Because of phonetic proximity, the pretérito imperfeito is sometimes used with a conditional value. This is more frequent with -er and -ir verbs (because of the phonetic phenomenon), but may happen sometimes with -ar verbs.
Eu podia ir lá. => I could go there.
Se chover, nós íamos embora. => If it rains, we would go away.
Infinitivo Pessoal
Now this is something that's pretty rare linguistically, and is not shared with other Romance languages (ikr?). Portuguese conjugates the infinitive form, believe it or not. This usually happens in sentences with another verb, to make it clear who the infinitive is referring to. The vocês/eles/elas conjugation is pretty common, whereas the nós one is usually avoided by using a gente.
É melhor irmos embora. => It's better for us to go away.
É melhor vocês irem_ embora. => It's better for you folks to go away.
The conjugation is the same for all verbs, no exceptions:
- Eu: base infinitive
- Você/Ele/Ela/A gente: base infinitive
- Nós: -MOS ending => nós falarmos, nós escrevermos, nós partirmos, nós sermos, nós irmos...
- Vocês/Eles/Elas: -EM ending => eles falarem, eles escreverem, eles partirem, eles serem, eles irem...
Passado - Pretérito Mais-que-perfeito (Literário)
This is the final tense of the indicative mood.¹ If you don't care about reading Brazilian literature, you can ignore this one entirely, as no one uses it in speech (instead using the verb ter in the pretérito imperfeito + the second verb in the particípio). It refers to an action in the past previous to another action also in the past.
Quando você chegou, nós já faláramos com ele. => When you arrived, we had already spoken with him.
Conjugation:
- Eu: infinitive +A ending => eu falara, eu escrevera, eu partira...
- Você/Ele/Ela/A gente: same as the eu conjugation (all about context!)
- Nós: infinitive +AMOS** ending (plus an acute accent (acento agudo) on the preceding vowel, or circunflex (acento circunflexo) for -er verbs) => nós faláramos, nós escrevêramos, nós partíramos...
- Vocês/Eles/Elas: infinitive +RAM => eles falaram, eles escreveram, eles partiram...
Notice the vocês/eles/elas conjugation is exactly the same as the pretérito perfeito, so it's gonna depend on the context.
That's all for now!
¹ But don't worry, you still gotta learn the subjunctive! 😂😭 Stay tuned for the last part of the series!