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Portuguese Present Tense – Usage Rundown Anchored to English
This article concerns Portuguese equivalents to the English Present Simple, Present Continuous, and Present Perfect tenses.
We will be mostly focusing on usage, not conjugation. To learn more about present tense conjugation in Portuguese, take a look at this one: Portuguese Regular Verbs and Conjugation Patterns in the Present Tense.
Let’s dive in.
Here are a couple of analogous reads on Portuguese Past and Future tenses:
• Portuguese Past Tenses – Usage Rundown Anchored to English
• Portuguese Future Tenses – Usage Rundown Anchored to English
Present Simple
Henceforth, I will be using the regular verb cantar (to sing) for all the usage examples:
| Cantar | Present Simple Presente | |
| Eu | canto |
| Tu | cantas |
| Ele, ela | canta |
| Nós | cantamos |
| Vocês Eles, elas | cantam |
| Present Participle Gerúndio | cantando |
| Past Participle Particípio passado | cantado |
In short, we use the Present Simple to talk about things done regularly (habits, repeated actions, etc). Here’s an example:
| Eu canto num grupo coral às terças-feiras. I sing in a choir on Tuesdays. |
We can also use the Present Simple to express a time in the future (as long as we have some adverb or adverbial phrase indicating a future time):
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