Pretérito perfeito — the common irregulars
A small crowd of very frequent verbs refuses the endings from lesson 16 and builds its own past. The good news: there are about a dozen, they're identical in Brazil and Portugal, and once you have them you can tell almost any story. The strangest pair comes first — ser and ir share one past, so fui means both 'I was' and 'I went', and only the rest of the sentence tells you which.
SER and IR — same forms, two meanings
fui, foi, fomos, foram — that's the whole table for both verbs. Eu fui professor = I was a teacher (ser). Eu fui ao Rio = I went to Rio (ir). What follows decides: a noun or adjective standing alone → ser; a place after a, para or até → ir. A viagem foi boa = the trip was good. One very Brazilian habit worth recognizing: in speech people swap that a for em — Fui no mercado, Fui na praia. Careful writing keeps ao and à, but your ear will meet no and na far more often.
TER, ESTAR — the 'tive' family
ter → tive, teve, tivemos, tiveram. Tive uma ideia = I had an idea. estar → estive, esteve, estivemos, estiveram. Estive em casa o dia todo = I was at home all day. The two rhyme because they share the -ive- stem, and both describe a closed episode: Tive medo = I got scared (at that moment), Estive doente = I was sick (and it's over). Note the pronunciation: tive starts like 'chee', CHEE-vee.
FAZER — fiz
fiz, fez, fizemos, fizeram. fazer = to do / to make, and it carries a lot of weight: fazer comida, fazer compras (to go shopping), fazer anos (to have a birthday), and the weather — fez frio ontem = it was cold yesterday. The single most useful question in this lesson: O que você fez ontem? = What did you do yesterday? Answer it out loud a few times.
DIZER, VER, DAR
dizer (to say) → disse, disse, dissemos, disseram — the eu form and the ele form are spelled the same, so the subject carries the load: eu disse, ela disse. ver (to see) → vi, viu, vimos, viram. Tiny and tidy. dar (to give) → dei, deu, demos, deram. And remember where the object pronoun goes in Brazil: Ela me disse, Ele me deu um abraço — in front, never hooked onto the end.
Other useful irregulars
vir (to come) → vim, veio, viemos, vieram — don't confuse vim (I came) with vi (I saw). poder → pude, pôde, pudemos, puderam (the circumflex on pôde keeps it apart from the present pode). querer → quis, quis, quisemos, quiseram. saber → soube, soube, soubemos, souberam, and in the past it usually means 'found out': Soube ontem = I found out yesterday. trazer (to bring) → trouxe, trouxe, trouxemos, trouxeram — that x sounds like a plain s: TROH-see.
Putting it together
Mix these with the regular endings from lesson 16 and you can narrate a whole day: Ontem fui ao mercado, comprei comida, vi meu primo e falei com ele. Add the softeners you already know: Não pude ficar = I couldn't stay. Tive que voltar = I had to go back (ter que + infinitive; the written version is ter de). And in conversation a gente takes over the nós slot again: a gente foi, a gente fez, a gente viu — third person forms doing plural work.
