A1 (Beginner)Lesson 3: Present Indicative & Modal Verbs
Ter (to have), ir (to go), and fazer (to do/make) are essential irregular verbs that appear in almost every Portuguese conversation and must be memorized since they don't follow regular conjugation patterns.
Ter (to have): tenho, tem, temos, têm — possession, age, obligation, "there is/are".
Ir (to go): vou, vai, vamos, vão — movement and the everyday future (ir + infinitive).
Fazer (to do/make): faço, faz, fazemos, fazem — activities and the weather.
All three are completely irregular — memorize them (a gente → tem / vai / faz).
Age uses ter, not ser/estar: Tenho vinte anos.
Weather and "there is/are" use faz / tem in the 3rd-person singular.
These three verbs do an enormous amount of work: ter covers having things, your age and obligations; ir covers going places and the everyday future; fazer covers activities and the weather. Two of their most common uses trip up English speakers, because Portuguese doesn't think the way English does: you don't say you are 20 — you have 20 years (tenho vinte anos), and the weather isn't "it is cold" but literally "it makes cold" (faz frio). Learn these patterns as whole phrases and you can talk about possessions, plans, age and weather from your very first conversations.
ter / ir / fazer (conjugated) + noun / infinitive / object
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Ter (to have), ir (to go) and fazer (to do/make) turn up in almost every Portuguese sentence. They're completely irregular, so the forms below are worth memorizing early.
TER — to have
eu tenho
você / ele / ela tem (a gente tem too — see Lesson 2)
nós temos
vocês / eles / elas têm
IR — to go
"Eu tenho um carro." (I have a car.)
"Você tem tempo?" (Do you have time?)
"Nós temos um problema." (We have a problem.)
"Ela tem dois filhos." (She has two children.)
"Tem café aqui." (There's coffee here.)
"Eu vou para casa." (I'm going home.)
"Nós vamos ao cinema." (We're going to the movies.)
"Eles vão viajar amanhã." (They're going to travel tomorrow.)
"Você vai trabalhar hoje?" (Are you going to work today?)
Formal / written: Há um problema.
Everyday Brazilian: Tem um problema. (use this one)
English "there is/are" becomes tem — never ser or estar: ❌ É um problema aqui. / Está um problema aqui.
Ir a — a quick trip: Vou ao cinema.
Ir para — going home / for longer: Vou para casa.
Ir em — very colloquial Brazilian: Vou no shopping.
❌ Sou vinte anos. / Estou vinte anos.
Brazilians say tem, not há: in Brazilian Portuguese, ter has largely taken over from haver to mean "there is / there are" — people say Tem gente aqui far more than the textbook Há gente aqui. Linguists describe haver as now mostly restricted to formal and written registers, while spoken Brazilian uses existential tem almost exclusively. It's one of the clearest features that sets Brazilian Portuguese apart from European Portuguese. (Avelar, "On the emergence of TER as an existential verb in Brazilian Portuguese")
The future tense almost nobody speaks: Portuguese has a one-word future (farei, viajarei), but in everyday speech people overwhelmingly use ir + infinitive instead — vou fazer, vou viajar. The synthetic form survives mainly in writing, news and formal speech, which is why ir doubles as the everyday future auxiliary you'll actually hear on the street. (ielanguages — Portuguese Future Tense)
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