tinha + particípio, teria + particípio
Two compound tenses, both built on ter plus a past participle. The mais-que-perfeito composto — tinha falado = had spoken — puts one past event behind another one: Quando eu cheguei, ela já tinha saído. The condicional composto — teria falado = would have spoken — is the sentence you use for what didn't happen: Se eu tivesse estudado, teria passado. Between them they cover flashbacks, regrets and missed chances. And there's a Brazilian shortcut hiding in here: in speech, tinha quietly does both jobs.
The past participle — review and pattern
You've been building participles since lesson 16 without giving them a name. -ar verbs take -ado: falar → falado, comprar → comprado, estudar → estudado. -er and -ir verbs take -ido: comer → comido, partir → partido, viver → vivido, receber → recebido. Then the short list of irregulars you actually need: fazer → feito, dizer → dito, ver → visto, escrever → escrito, abrir → aberto, pôr → posto, vir → vindo, ir → ido, ser → sido, ter → tido. One rule saves you a lot of worry: after ter, the participle never changes shape. Ela tinha falado, eles tinham falado, a gente tinha falado — the same falado every time, no gender, no plural. (Participles do agree with things when the verb is ser, but that's lesson 30's business.)
Mais-que-perfeito composto — tinha + participle
Take ter in the imperfeito and hang a participle on it: eu tinha, você tinha, ele tinha / ela tinha, a gente tinha, nós tínhamos, vocês tinham / eles tinham — plus the participle. So: tinha falado, tinha comido, tínhamos partido, tinham feito. The job is to place one past event behind another. Quando eu cheguei, ela já tinha saído = When I arrived, she had already left. The arriving is the main line; the leaving happened before it. Reported speech pulls a plain past one step back the same way: Estudei em Salvador becomes Ele me disse que tinha estudado em Salvador. The word that most often walks in front of this tense is já: já tinha visto, já tinha comido, já tinha ido, já tinha escrito. There is also a one-word version — falara, comera, partira — which you'll meet in Machado de Assis and in newspaper headlines and absolutely nowhere else. Recognize it, never build one.
Condicional composto — teria + participle
Same recipe, different half: ter in the condicional (lesson 21) plus the participle. eu teria, você teria, ele teria / ela teria, a gente teria, nós teríamos, vocês teriam / eles teriam — plus the participle. Teria falado, teria comido, teríamos partido, teriam feito. It means 'would have done', and its home address is the main clause of an impossible past: Se eu tivesse estudado, teria passado na prova = If I had studied, I would have passed the exam. Away from a se sentence it handles speculation and polite hindsight: Teria sido melhor ficar em casa = It would have been better to stay home. Ela teria uns quarenta anos na época = She must have been about forty back then. In the news it also flags an unconfirmed claim: O motorista teria fugido = the driver reportedly fled. Hold on to this tense for writing — the last section explains why your ears will rarely catch it.
Sequencing past events — narrative use
When you tell a story, the pretérito perfeito carries the main line and the mais-que-perfeito composto handles every flashback. Cheguei na festa às nove. A Ana tinha chegado às oito e já tinha conhecido todo mundo. Two levels of past in three sentences, and nobody gets lost. Notice cheguei na festa, by the way: in Brazil you arrive em a place, so it's chegar na festa, chegar em casa, chegar no trabalho, and the textbook's chegar à festa sounds imported. The same stacking works with quando, depois que and antes de: Quando a gente saiu, o restaurante já tinha fechado. Ele só me contou depois que tudo já tinha acontecido. In relaxed speech people often flatten the flashback into a plain imperfeito instead — quando a gente saiu, o restaurante já estava fechado — and that's perfectly good Portuguese. The compound form is simply sharper when you're stacking three or four events and want the order to stay clear.
Past regrets and what-might-have-beens
Put the two tenses together and you get the grammar of hindsight. The se clause takes tivesse + participle (rung 3 from lesson 28) and the main clause takes teria + participle: Se eu tivesse sabido, não teria vindo = If I had known, I wouldn't have come. Se eles tivessem chegado a tempo, teriam pegado o trem. (This mood is the one Brazilian schoolbooks call the subjuntivo — grammars written in Portugal call it the conjuntivo, so you'll see both labels depending on where the book was printed.) For regret without a se clause, three fixed formulas do almost everything. devia ter + participle = should have: Devia ter ligado ontem. Não devia ter falado nada. podia ter + participle = could have: Você podia ter me avisado! And queria ter + participle = I wish I had: Queria ter visto o show. All three keep the pronoun in front, the Brazilian way: me avisado, never the hyphenated order.
Brazilian register: more imperfeito, less compound
Here's what actually comes out of Brazilian mouths. The mais-que-perfeito composto is alive and well — já tinha visto is everyday speech. The condicional composto is not: teria vindo is something you write, and what you say is tinha vindo. Se eu tivesse sabido, eu não tinha vindo is what you'll hear at a kitchen table nine times out of ten, and in fully relaxed speech even the se clause simplifies to Se eu soubesse, não tinha vindo. None of that is sloppy — it's the spoken register, and the compound conditional would sound stiff there. Where teria does show up is in writing: reports, formal email, journalism, anything with a se clause you had time to plan. Two habits to copy: keep teria for the page, and don't be surprised when a Brazilian answers your careful teria feito with a comfortable tinha feito. One last preview — a few verbs have two participles (aceitar → aceitado with ter, aceito with ser), and lesson 30 sorts them out.
