WHAT IS PRETÉRITO PERFEITO?
Pretérito Perfeito is the equivalent to Past Simple, in Portuguese.
It is used to talk about finished actions in the past.
Let’s see some examples:
1) “ Ontem, fomos ao cinema” ( yesterday, we went to the cinema)
2) “A semana passada foi o aniversário do Miguel” (Last week, it was Miguel anniversary) .
In both examples we are mentioning events already finished in time and we used adverbs of time, that reinforce the fact that these actions already happened : ontem ( yesterday) and a semana passada ( last week).
TIME EXPRESSIONS FOR FINISHED ACTIONS IN THE PAST
There are other expressions of time that can give us this idea of a finished action in the past:
> Anteontem ( the day before yesterday).
> Há uma semana, há dois anos , há muito tempo (one week ago; two years ago; long time ago). Notice that “há” in this context means “ago”. “Há”is in fact the verb “ haver” (= there is) . If we made a literal translation it would mean “ there is one week” or “ there are two years”.
> O mês passado, o ano passado (last month, last year).
To build Pretérito Perfeito ( past simple ), you should also know the endings. Sometimes you do not have the time expressions in a sentence and the way you can identify a tense is through its ending .
In Portuguese the endings are distributed in three main parts: verbs ending in “-ar”, verbs ending in “-er” and verbs ending in “-ir”. For example , “ amar” is the infinitive of the verb “ to love” and ends in “-ar”(amar). “ Correr” means “ to run” and ends in “-er” (correr). “Dormir” means “to sleep” and ends in “-ir” ( dormir).
ENDINGS OF PRETÉRITO PERFEITO
Watch the following image and have a look at the regular verb endings in Portuguese.
![](https://123portuguese.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/35CB6823-5423-4DE0-9A8B-4AF5CF151F84.jpeg)
Now let’s see how it works with the verbs we already mentioned (amar, correr and dormir).
![](https://123portuguese.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/EBDD5416-9E5D-4439-BEAD-BC53C1E8BFFD.jpeg)
In the following video You will find a story in Pretérito Perfeito.