Estevam Donnabella - Speak like a Brazilian: how to get by with the 65 most important verbs

Speak like a Brazilian :

HOW TO GET BY WITH THE 65 MOST IMPORTANT VERBS

estevam donnabella

BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE ACADEMY

Speak Like A Brazilian: How To Get By With The 65 Most Important Verbs

Estevam Donnabella

Brazilian Portuguese Academy

1st Edition May 2021

ISBN: 978-65-994862-1-0

Cover design: naTRIBO

E-book design: Colchete Solues Editoriais

Copyright 2021 by Estevam Donnabella

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

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Contents

Introduction

Anyone learning a new language should master leastwise-elementary grammar and lots of vocabulary to get to a conversational level. Although this is true, one can quickly note that memorizing isolated words is not enough to get there. The reason for this: each language brings intrinsic cultural features that change the way natives use the words in a sentence.

Consider the sentence I am 32 years old in English and Eu tenho 32 anos in Portuguese. They mean the same, even though they use different verbs. The literal translation to English would be I have 32 years old, which sounds weird since, in English, one of the usages of the to have verb is to express ownership. In Portuguese, the verb ter (to have) also indicate possession, so in this case, the problem is not in the meaning of the verb but in how English speakers and Portuguese speakers face things. It is a cultural matter where Portuguese speakers (and other romance languages like Spanish, French, and Italian) consider age as an possession matter (like a badge or reached level) while English speakers (and other Germanic rooted languages like German, Dutch or Swedish) consider age as a being feature.

Another example is I am hungry = eu estou com fome. Although the verb is the same, in English, it comes with an adjective derivate from the noun hunger while in Portuguese comes with the noun itself, which in turn requires a preposition. The direct translation of the Portuguese sentence to English would be I am with hunger. I am starving = eu estou morrendo de fome or eu estou morto de fome, wherein in both cases, the fome is amplified by the verb morrendo (dying) or the adjective morto (dead). Of course, there is a direct translation for starving (faminto), but not only this word is in disuse in the spoken language but also, Brazilians tend to be casual or very informal in the spoken language, so using amplifiers as I am dying of is very common even to some formal situations.

That said, one could not produce these sentences mentioned just knowing the necessary isolated words. One really must have seen these sentences and usages at least once to understand how to use them.

Finally, that is the reason I wrote this book. The 65 most important verbs in Portuguese translates to more than 100 verbs in English. If you learn these verbs and their usage considering the cultural aspects involved, you will have a powerful vocabulary set and the cultural knowledge necessary to build meaningful sentences.

Have fun!

Estevam Donnabella

Creator of Brazilian Portuguese Academy

PART 1:
Verb tenses, conjugation and culture aspects

This part is optional. If you already know the Portuguese subjects and how to conjugate verbs accordingly, you can go directly to part 2 of the book.

There are 25 ways to use a verb in Portuguese considering all the verb tenses available. Also, there are eleven formal subjects in Portuguese. So, if you would have to study all conjugations for all subjects for all verb tenses, you would have to learn more than one hundred forms for each verb. Maybe that is one of the reasons that studying Portuguese using traditional books is so tedious and heavy.

Fortunately, it is possible to do just fine in the spoken language and most of the written language with just five verb tenses and only four forms of the conjugated verb, making your life so much easier. As you may see throughout this book, we focus more on the spoken language than the formal Portuguese, which are very different from each other.

Subjects

Let us first understand how it can be possible to exist eleven subjects and still we can do just fine with just four forms of the verb.

Consider the table below with the English subject and the Portuguese equivalent. We also added a comments column to clarify some cultural aspects.

To zoom in on the table, hold it pressed for a couple of seconds. An icon will pop up. Click on it.

The good news is that the subjects voc, ele/ela e a gente always have the same verb conjugation. The subjects vocs, eles/elas always have the same form too. That said, you just have to learn four conjugations (or forms) for each verb:

• Eu (I)
• Voc (you singular), ele (he), ela (she), and a gente (we)
• Ns (we)
• Vocs, (you plural), eles (they masculine), and elas (they feminine)

Verbs endings

Verbs in Portuguese always end in:

• -AR , as in est ar (to be), and ar (to walk), am ar (to love), acord ar (to wake up), and so on
• -ER , as in s er (to be), com er (to eat), corr er (to run), beb er (to drink), and so on
• -IR , as in dorm ir (to sleep), sorr ir (to smile), dirig ir (to drive), and so on

The remaining part of the verb is called raiz (root), as est- in est ar, and- in and ar and so on.

To conjugate the verb, that is, to change its form accordingly to the person who is speaking, just keep the root and add the conjugated suffix. That works well for the regular verbs. If the verb is irregular then you have to memorize it. In English, there are many irregular verbs. See below the difference between a regular and irregular verb in English:

• Regular English verb: to work -> present I work -> past I worked
• Irregular English verb: to sleep -> present I sleep -> past I slept

For each verb tense and each verb ending (-ar, -er, -ir), there is a corresponding suffix for each subject.

Lets us see two forms of the present in Portuguese.

Present

This book teaches two forms of the present tense in Portuguese, which is enough to express yourself in daily life. We also approach the imperative form at the end of part 1, which is a sort of present tense.

Simple present

Consider the verbs bellow:

To zoom in on the table, hold it pressed for a couple of seconds. An icon will pop up. Click on it.