Portuguese Past Subjunctive (Imperfeito do Conjuntivo)

The Subjunctive mood is often a source of much whining and moaning among Portuguese language learners – so many conjugations one must keep track of!

We have three tenses within the Subjunctive mood: Past, Present, and Future. Today we are tackling specifically the Past Subjunctive (also known as Imperfect Subjunctive or Imperfeito do Conjuntivo in Portuguese).

Shortly, we use the Portuguese Past Subjunctive in a host of different situations: from expressing uncertainty, desire, and unreal scenarios, to it being an integral part of subordinate clauses of various kinds.

In what follows, I am going to walk you through each of the different contexts – with concrete examples – in which we use the Past Subjunctive.

We’ll start by looking into its conjugation.

Lesson #84 Imperfeito Conjuntivo - Portuguesepedia

How to conjugate the Portuguese Past Subjunctive

Regular verbs

The conjugation of regular verbs is straightforward and works the same way across our 3 conjugation groups.

You just need to replace the final r of the Infinitive form with the endings marked in bold:

	Pensar 1st conjugation	Acender 2nd conjugation	Intuir 3rd conjugation
Eu	pensasse	acendesse	intuisse
Tu	pensasses	acendesses	intuisses
Ele, ela, você	pensasse	acendesse	intuisse
Nós	pensássemos	acendêssemos	intuíssemos
Vocês	pensassem	acendessem	intuissem
Eles, elas	pensassem	acendessem	intuissem

Pronunciation tips! Notice how the 1-person plural is always stressed on the third last syllable (otherwise, we stress the second last). Learn more about word stress in Portuguese: Portuguese Word Stress and Accent Marks.

Irregular verbs

For irregular verbs, you go from the 3-person plural of the Preterite tense (Pretérito Perfeito) and replace the -ram ending with the conjugated endings shown in the table above. Here are a few examples:

	3-person plural Preterite		Past Subjunctive verb forms
ir / ser	foram	→	fosse, fosses, fosse, fôssemos, fossem
fazer	fizeram	→	fizesse, fizesses, fizesse, fizéssemos, fizessem
ter	tiveram	→	tivesse, tivesses, tivesse, tivéssemos, tivessem
trazer	trouxeram	→	trouxesse, trouxesses, trouxesse, trouxéssemos, trouxessem
. . .

When to use the Portuguese Past Subjunctive

We use the Portuguese Past Subjunctive to express uncertainty, hypothetically, desire, and unreal scenarios. Besides these, it often appears in subordinate clauses of different sorts.

Below, we’ll look at when to use the Portuguese Past Subjunctive in greater detail.

Impersonal structures

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