Ter (to have) — present tense
ter is one of the hardest-working verbs in Portuguese, and it's irregular. You met tenho and tem in lesson 5; now you lock in the rest. ter means 'to have', but it also powers a stack of expressions where English uses 'to be': ter fome ('to be hungry', literally 'to have hunger'), ter … anos ('to be … years old'). And in Brazil tem does one more job: 'there is / there are'.
The full conjugation
eu tenho = I have. você tem / ele tem / ela tem = you have, he/she has. nós temos = we have. vocês têm / eles têm / elas têm = you all have, they have. That's the whole Brazilian set: tenho, tem, temos, têm. Two notes. First, the plural têm takes a circumflex in writing to separate it from singular tem; out loud they're nearly identical. Second, Brazilians constantly replace nós with a gente, which takes the singular verb: a gente tem = we have. You'll hear it more often than temos. (The tu form is tens, alive in Rio Grande do Sul and parts of the Northeast — where people often say tu tem anyway. Recognize it; don't drill it.)
Possession
Same job as English 'have'. Tenho um gato = I have a cat. Você tem um livro? = Do you have a book? A Ana tem dois irmãos = Ana has two brothers. Nós temos uma casa em São Paulo = We have a house in São Paulo. The subject pronoun is optional whenever the verb already makes the person clear — Tenho fome needs no eu. But keep você in place: tem on its own could be ele, ela or você.
The 'ter' idioms — where English uses 'to be'
ter fome = to be hungry (literally 'to have hunger'). ter sede = to be thirsty. ter sono = to be sleepy. ter medo = to be afraid. ter razão = to be right. Don't reach for estar with a bare adjective here — Portuguese wires these states to a noun. Brazil gives you a second, very common option: estar com + the same noun, for how you feel right now. Estou com fome = I'm hungry (at this moment). Estou com sono = I'm sleepy. Tenho medo de cachorro describes a standing fear; Estou com medo is what you say in the dark hallway.
Age — 'ter … anos'
Age runs on ter, never on ser. Quantos anos você tem? = How old are you? — literally 'how many years do you have?' The answer: Tenho vinte anos = I'm twenty. Always include anos; Tenho vinte on its own sounds like an unfinished sentence, the way English 'I have twenty' would. For the in-between numbers, glue them with e: vinte e cinco = twenty-five, trinta e um = thirty-one.
'Tem' vs 'há' — there is / there are
In Brazil, 'there is' and 'there are' are both tem. Tem um gato na casa = There's a cat in the house. Tem cinco livros na mesa = There are five books on the table. One form, singular or plural, no agreement to worry about. Textbooks also teach há (from the verb haver), and you'll see it in newspapers, signs and formal writing: Há água na mesa. It's correct everywhere — it just sounds bookish coming out of your mouth in a Brazilian kitchen. Say tem, read há.
