Portuguese students often struggle with when to use “há”, “por”, or “durante” to express time duration. Let’s break it down into four different temporal contexts to help you discern between them. Read on.

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Fui à farmácia comprar um medicamento

Fill in the gaps with the missing prepositions.

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Fiquei em casa por causa do frio

Fill in the blanks with the missing prepositions.

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1. Durative Action /Present

We say “há” followed by any given time interval to express the time duration of an action that has been unfolding up to the present moment (and still ongoing in the present):

Eu estou a escrever este artigo há 20 minutos.
I’ve been writing this article for 20 minutes.

Note that the sentence is in the Present tense (“estou a escrever”). The English equivalent, on the other hand, usually uses the Present Perfect Continuous (“I’ve been writing”) and the preposition “for” preceding the time interval (“for 20 minutes”).

2. Situated Action /Past

We also say “há” followed by any given time interval to situate a point or action in the past:

Eu comecei a escrever este artigo há 20 minutes.
I started writing this article 20 minutes ago.

The situated point in the past of the example above is the moment I started to write this article. Note that the sentence is written in the Past tense (“comecei a escrever”) and the same goes for its English equivalent (“started to write”). Note also that you have now “ago“ and not “for” as before. 

3. Durative Action /Past

We don’t say “há” to express a durative action in the past (as we usually do when the durative action relates to the present). Instead, we say either “durante” or “por” (they are interchangeable) followed by the time interval:

a.
Eu fui jornalista durante 2 anos.
I was a journalist for 2 years.

b.
Eu fui jornalista por 2 anos.
I was a journalist for 2 years.

In this context, we can even drop the preposition altogether:

c.
Eu fui jornalista 2 anos.
I was a journalist for 2 years.

Note that all options above are in the Past tense (“eu fui”), as is the case for the English sentence (“I was”). The latter uses the preposition “for” followed by the time interval (“for 2 years”).

4 Durative Action /Future

We don’t say “há” to express a durative action projected in the future (as we usually do when the durative action relates to the present). Just like in the case above, we say either “durante” or “por” followed by the time interval:

a.
Vou estar no Japão durante 3 meses.
I’m going to be in Japan for 3 months.

b.
Vou estar no Japão por 3 meses.
I’m going to be in Japan for 3 months.

Just like before, we can drop the preposition altogether and only mention the time interval:

c.
Vou estar no Japão 3 meses.
I’m going to be in Japan for 3 months.

Note that all sentences are written using the Future tense (“vou estar”) and the same applies to the English equivalents (“I am going to”). Like in point 3 above, the English sentence uses “for” followed by the time interval.