Presente
present indicative
Habits, current states, facts, and the near future. The foundation of everyday speech.
| eu | falo |
| tu | falas |
| ele / ela / você | fala |
| nós | falamos |
| eles / elas / vocês | falam |
European Portuguese verb tenses are not learned all at once — they open up in stages as your level rises. The first five cover the daily present, a clean past, and the future; they get you through everyday conversation and the CIPLE exam. The second five add the nuance of narrative, hypothesis, and formal registers that B2 requires.
Each tense below comes with its Portuguese name, its function in everyday speech, and a full conjugation table for falar — a regular -ar verb that shows the pattern clearly. The grammar reference that powers pt-drill comes from Vladimir Prus's open resource at portuguese.vladimirprus.com.
Click "Read the rules" on any card to go directly to the canonical explanation on that site.
Habits, current states, facts, and the near future. The foundation of everyday speech.
| eu | falo |
| tu | falas |
| ele / ela / você | fala |
| nós | falamos |
| eles / elas / vocês | falam |
Completed actions in the past. The go-to tense for narrating what happened.
| eu | falei |
| tu | falaste |
| ele / ela / você | falou |
| nós | falámos |
| eles / elas / vocês | falaram |
Past habits, repeated actions, and background descriptions. Often translated as "used to" or "was doing".
| eu | falava |
| tu | falavas |
| ele / ela / você | falava |
| nós | falávamos |
| eles / elas / vocês | falavam |
Plans, predictions, and promises. More formal than the present-tense future common in speech.
| eu | falarei |
| tu | falarás |
| ele / ela / você | falará |
| nós | falaremos |
| eles / elas / vocês | falarão |
Polite requests, hypotheticals, and reported speech. Equivalent to "would" in English.
| eu | falaria |
| tu | falarias |
| ele / ela / você | falaria |
| nós | falaríamos |
| eles / elas / vocês | falariam |
Actions completed before another past event. Used in formal writing and literary registers.
| eu | falara |
| tu | falaras |
| ele / ela / você | falara |
| nós | faláramos |
| eles / elas / vocês | falaram |
Doubt, desire, emotion, and commands in the present. Triggered by verbs like querer, esperar, pedir.
| eu | fale |
| tu | fales |
| ele / ela / você | fale |
| nós | falemos |
| eles / elas / vocês | falem |
Hypothetical conditions and indirect speech in the past. Common after se in contrary-to-fact clauses.
| eu | falasse |
| tu | falasses |
| ele / ela / você | falasse |
| nós | falássemos |
| eles / elas / vocês | falassem |
Future conditions and open hypotheticals. Uniquely common in Portuguese; often replaced by present indicative in informal speech.
| eu | falar |
| tu | falares |
| ele / ela / você | falar |
| nós | falarmos |
| eles / elas / vocês | falarem |
Direct commands and instructions. Affirmative imperatives draw from the present indicative; negative ones from the subjunctive.
| tu (afirm.) | fala |
| ele / ela / você | fale |
| nós | falemos |
| eles / elas / vocês | falem |
| tu (neg.) | não fales |
Every tense rule, conjugation pattern, and worked example in pt-drill comes from Vladimir Prus's open grammar reference at portuguese.vladimirprus.com. If you want to read the rules in depth — irregular stems, subjunctive triggers, the full paradigm tables — his site is the canonical resource. pt-drill turns those rules into daily practice; his reference is where the knowledge lives.
Explore the grammar reference →