Portuguese Irregular Verbs: Memorize ter, ser, estar, haver and fazer in 86 Flashcards

Six verbs do most of the work in Portuguese: ter, estar, ser, haver, pôr and fazer. They are also the most irregular verbs in the language. The Flip It deck Portuguese Irregular Verb Conjugations (PR8481) gives you 86 cards: each verb's meaning, then its forms in the present, preterite, imperfect, past participle and gerund.

Sample cards

Every form in the deck

tenho, tens, tem, temos, tendes, têm · tive, tiveste, teve · tinha, tido, tendo · estou, estás, está · estive, estiveste, esteve · estava, estado, estando · sou, és, é, somos, sois, são · fui, foste, foi · era, eras, sido, sendo · hei, hás, há · houve, houveste, havido, havendo · ponho, pões, põe, pomos, pondes, põem · pus, puseste, pôs · punha, posto, pondo · faço, fazes, faz · fiz, fizeste, fez · fazia, fizera, farei, farás, fará, feito, fazendo.

Learn the patterns, not the 86 answers

The preterite has one shape. tive/teve, estive/esteve, fiz/fez, pus/pôs: the eu form ends in -i or has an u, and the ele form shifts the vowel to e or ô. Neither form carries a regular ending, so drill them as pairs. Also note that fui means both I was (ser) and I went (ir), because the two verbs share a preterite. Context tells you which one.

Only four imperfects are irregular: era (ser), tinha (ter), punha (pôr) and vinha (vir, not in this deck). estava and fazia follow the regular pattern, so those cards cost you almost nothing.

Watch the accents too: têm (they have) vs tem (he has), põem vs põe. pôr keeps its circumflex even after the 1990 spelling reform, so you can tell it apart from the preposition por.

Tidy the deck before you drill

• Delete cards 42 and 85. ente (ser) and faciente (fazer) are not working verb forms. ente is a noun meaning being, and modern Portuguese has no productive present participle.
• Tag the vós cards (tendes, sois, pondes) as archaic. Nobody uses vós in daily speech in Portugal or Brazil.
• Brazilian learners: you can also tag the tu cards. Most Brazilians use você with the ele form, so tem, está, é, faz are the forms you'll use most.
• Fill the gaps. The nós/eles forms of estar (estamos, estão) and the preterites of haver, pôr and fazer stop at ele. Add six cards to complete the tables.
• Context matters. hei survives mostly in hei de (I will, I must). The synthetic pluperfect fizera is literary; people say tinha feito.

Practice it

Open Flip It and look up deck code PR8481. Once the tables come automatically, see how they sound on each side of the Atlantic with our guide to Brazilian vs European Portuguese.