B1 (Intermediate)Lesson 1: Past Habits & Future Plans
Lesson 1 handed you three tenses; this is where you spend them. Two jobs you will do constantly in Brazil — saying what life used to be like, and dragging a vague vamos marcar into somebody's actual week. The only new machinery here is costumar; everything else you already own and just have to aim.
Set the frame first, then let the imperfeito run: Antigamente, a gente morava no interior. (We used to live in the countryside.)
costumava + infinitive is the explicit "used to": Ele costumava pescar. (He used to go fishing.)
costumar is not acostumar — the second one is getting used to something
General habits usually take the plain imperfeito; estava fazendo can describe a temporary routine
A single completed event takes the perfeito: Uma vez eu fui a Salvador. (Once I went to Salvador.)
Propose with Que tal…? or Topa…? + noun or infinitive, or Vamos…? + infinitive
marcar puts a plan in the diary, combinar agrees it, remarcar moves it
Combinado! is the word that closes a plan
Past habits: time frame (quando eu era criança, antigamente) + imperfeito · or costumava + infinitive — Plans: vou + infinitive · Que tal…? · Vamos…? · marcar, combinar, remarcar
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Two conversations run on a loop in Brazil: how things used to be, and what we should do about Saturday. The first is where friendships get their depth — nobody just says eu morava em Minas, they tell you about the neighbour's dog and the smell of the kitchen — and the second is where they get their calendar. The trap is that the second conversation has a fake ending. A gente se fala, vamos marcar can be said at the end of a chat the way English says we should catch up sometime. It can express a real wish to meet, but it does not by itself confirm an appointment; agreeing on the details makes the plan definite. Learn to hear that difference and you stop waiting by the phone — and learn to say que tal terça? and you stop being the one who is always waited for.
The imperfeito on its own is ambiguous — it can be a habit, a description, or the background to something else. A time phrase at the front helps establish the period in question:
| Frame | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Quando eu era criança… | When I was a child… |
| Quando eu morava em Recife… | When I lived in Recife… |
| Na época da faculdade… | Back in my university days… |
| Antigamente… | In the old days… |
| Naquela época… | At that time… |
| Nos anos 90… | In the nineties… |
"Quando eu era criança, minha mãe fazia bolo toda sexta." (When I was a child, my mother baked a cake every Friday.)
"Na época da faculdade, eu estudava de madrugada." (Back in my university days, I studied in the small hours.)
"Nos anos 90, a gente alugava filme na locadora." (In the nineties we rented films from the video shop.)
"Naquela época, ninguém usava capacete." (Back then nobody wore a helmet.)
"Meu pai costumava ler o jornal no café da manhã." (My father used to read the paper over breakfast.)
"Costumávamos passar o Natal na casa da minha tia." (We used to spend Christmas at my aunt's.)
"Eu costumo correr antes do trabalho." (I usually run before work.)
Costumar is doing something habitually; acostumar-se is getting used to something new. Eu costumava morar no Rio. (I used to live in Rio.) · Eu me acostumei com o calor. (I got used to the heat.) Swapping them produces a sentence that is grammatical and means something else entirely.
The imperfeito can describe habits, states or actions in progress. Use the perfeito for a single event presented as complete: Eu ia à praia todo domingo (I went to the beach every Sunday) but Uma vez eu fui à praia de madrugada (Once I went to the beach at dawn). Uma vez, um dia and naquele dia establish a time; they do not automatically force the perfeito. A state or background action at that time can still take the imperfeito.
Said vaguely at the end of a conversation, vamos marcar and a gente se fala can be warm goodbyes — the weight of "we should catch up sometime". This need not be insincere, but it does not guarantee a calendar entry. Agree on a concrete day and time to make the appointment definite, which is why Que dia você pode? is a useful question in this point.
The same verb that settles a plan also means "to go together": A gente combinou de sair sábado. (We agreed to go out on Saturday.) · Essa camisa combina com a calça. (That shirt goes with those trousers.) Context separates them without effort, but the first time you meet the second meaning it is a surprise.
The most famous Brazilian text about past habits is built out of one word and one tense. On 7 January 1962 Carlos Drummond de Andrade published a crônica in the Correio da Manhã that opens "Antigamente as garotas chamavam-se mademoiselles" and runs on through pages of forgotten expressions, nearly every verb in the imperfeito, until it closes with "Mas tudo isso era antigamente". Collected in Quadrante under the title Antigamente, it still turns up as a reading text in Brazilian exams — the IFPE set it in 2016. Sources: Portal da Crônica Brasileira, Estratégia Concursos
A commonly told story links fazer uma vaquinha to football. The story usually told is that in early-twentieth-century Rio, supporters passed the hat round to pay players, and named the sums after the animals of the jogo do bicho — 5 mil réis was um cachorro, 25 mil réis was uma vaca. Collecting a whole vaca took a lot of hands, so the diminutive stuck, and fazer uma vaquinha is now simply what you do when everyone pays a share. Linguist Aldo Bizzocchi presents this story as plausible but unverified. Sources: Diário do Rio, Diário de um Linguista
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