O mais-que-perfeito simples — a forma literária em -ra
Portuguese has TWO ways of saying 'had spoken'. The compound one you already use: tinha falado, havia falado — the imperfeito of ter or haver plus a participle. The simple one is a single word inherited straight from Latin: falara, comera, partira, vira, fora, tivera, fizera. They mean exactly the same thing — an action finished before another past action — but in Brazil the simple form has left the mouth completely and lives on the page: novels, news leads, history books, exam texts. Quando cheguei, ele já partira = Quando cheguei, ele já tinha partido. Building it is mechanical: take the third-person plural of the pretérito perfeito, cut off -ram, and add -ra, -ras, -ra, -ramos, -reis, -ram. falaram → falara. comeram → comera. partiram → partira. Two things to store. The nós form always carries an accent — faláramos, comêramos, partíramos. And the third-person plural is identical to the plain perfeito, so falaram is either 'they spoke' or 'they had spoken', and only context decides. You will almost never produce this tense. You will read it constantly. And you already say three of its fossils without knowing it: quem me dera, pudera, tomara que.
Why two mais-que-perfeitos? Compound vs. simple
Latin had a one-word pluperfect, and Portuguese inherited it whole: amara, amaras, amara — this is the SIMPLE mais-que-perfeito. Centuries later, speakers built a compound out of ter or haver plus the participle — tinha amado, havia amado — and the compound took over everything anyone actually says. The simple form retreated to writing and never came back. So the Brazilian map today has three shapes for the same idea. tinha falado is the neutral, everyday, spoken form. havia falado is its formal twin: correct, a little starched, at home in journalism, contracts and academic prose. falara is the same meaning in a dinner jacket — one word, literary, and essentially never spoken. The meanings are interchangeable: Já tinha visto o filme = Já havia visto o filme = Já vira o filme. Where you will meet the simple form: Machado de Assis, Graciliano Ramos, Clarice Lispector, Guimarães Rosa and anyone writing in that tradition; the first paragraph of a long report in the Folha or O Globo, where one word beats two; history textbooks; and the reading passages of vestibular and concurso exams, which is why every Brazilian student learns to recognize it. One honest footnote about speech: in Brazil even the COMPOUND often loses. Careful speech says Quando cheguei, ele já tinha saído; a conversation on the sidewalk is just as likely to flatten it to Quando cheguei, ele já saiu, with já carrying the past-before-past all by itself.
How to build the simple form — third-person plural minus -ram, plus the endings
One recipe, no exceptions. Take the third-person plural of the pretérito perfeito, remove -ram, and attach the endings. FIRST CONJUGATION, verbs in -ar: falaram → fala- gives falara, falaras, falara, faláramos, faláreis, falaram. SECOND, verbs in -er: comeram → come- gives comera, comeras, comera, comêramos, comêreis, comeram. THIRD, verbs in -ir: partiram → parti- gives partira, partiras, partira, partíramos, partíreis, partiram. Two rows deserve comment. The vós row — faláreis, comêreis, partíreis — is museum furniture: Brazil has no vós at all, and you will only ever see these forms in a nineteenth-century novel or a hymn. Ignore them and keep the other five. The nós row, on the other hand, is worth knowing because of its accent, which is obligatory: faláramos, comêramos, partíramos, fôramos, tivéramos. That accent is also your best clue when reading, and here Brazilian spelling helps you. Our pretérito perfeito first person plural is falamos, chegamos, cantamos — no accent, ever. So an accented faláramos on the page can only be the mais-que-perfeito. (Portugal writes falámos for the plain past, which blurs the contrast for readers there; in Brazil it is perfectly clean.) The last note is a warning you will need in a minute: the third-person plural of this tense — falaram, comeram, partiram — is spelled exactly like the plain perfeito. Nothing distinguishes them but the sentence around them.
Irregular verbs — the same trick works
Irregular verbs look frightening in this tense and are not, because the recipe never changes: third-person plural of the perfeito, minus -ram, plus the endings. ter: tiveram → tive- gives tivera, tiveras, tivera, tivéramos, tiveram = had had. ser and ir share one past, so they share this tense too: foram → fo- gives fora, foras, fora, fôramos, foram = had been / had gone. estar: estiveram → estive- gives estivera. fazer: fizeram → fize- gives fizera. dizer: disseram → disse- gives dissera. ver: viram → vi- gives vira. vir: vieram → vie- gives viera. pôr: puseram → puse- gives pusera. trazer: trouxeram → trouxe- gives trouxera. saber: souberam → soube- gives soubera. poder: puderam → pude- gives pudera — yes, the same word as the exclamation Pudera!, which is exactly what it is: a fossil. querer: quiseram → quise- gives quisera, which survives in the wistful Quisera eu! = 'I wish!'. dar: deram → de- gives dera, the word hiding inside quem me dera. tomar is a plain regular verb, but its form tomara became the most Brazilian wish-word there is: Tomara que dê certo! Learn the mechanism once and every irregular falls out of it — which is far cheaper than memorizing forty forms.
Where you'll meet it — registers and idioms
LITERARY PROSE, where two of them can stack in one sentence: 'O homem que comprara a casa nunca mais voltara ali' = 'The man who had bought the house never went back there again.' That is pure narrative voice, and it is why the tense survives. NEWS LEADS, where a single word is worth two: 'O ministro afirmara, na véspera, que a crise estava controlada.' HISTORY: 'Dom Pedro proclamara a independência às margens do Ipiranga' — though history books just as often use the plain proclamou. FOSSILS, which are alive and well in Brazilian mouths, and this is the part that pays off today. Quem me dera! = If only! I wish! — literally 'who would have given me', a perfect mais-que-perfeito of dar that nobody analyses any more. Brazilians also shorten it to Quem dera! and extend it: Quem me dera ter mais tempo, Quem dera fosse assim. Pudera! = No wonder! Of course! — said when an explanation makes everything obvious: Pudera! Ele não dormiu a noite toda. Tomara que + subjuntivo = I hope that, let's hope that: Tomara que não chova, Tomara que ele venha. This is one of the most common sentence openers in Brazil, and it is a mais-que-perfeito in disguise. Quisera eu! = I wish I could! — a touch literary, but you will hear it. Notice what these four have in common: they all express a wish or a realization about something already settled, which is exactly the emotional shape of a past-before-past.
Disambiguation — the third-person plural trap
The third-person plural of the simple mais-que-perfeito is spelled identically to the third-person plural of the pretérito perfeito. falaram = they spoke, or they had spoken. comeram = they ate, or they had eaten. partiram = they left, or they had left. fizeram, viram, foram — all doubled. Nothing in the word tells you which; the sentence has to. Three things tip the balance toward the mais-que-perfeito reading. First, another past event that this one clearly precedes: 'Quando a polícia chegou, os ladrões já fugiram há muito' reads as 'had long since fled'. Second, a marker like já, ainda, há muito, antes, naquela altura. Third, the register: if the text is literary and you have already seen a partira or a dissera in the same paragraph, the author is working in this tense and the plurals belong to it too. THE SAFE TEST, and it always works: mentally swap in tinham plus the participle. If os ladrões já tinham fugido fits the meaning, the simple reading is right; if it does not, you are looking at a plain past. One relief for the ear: since Brazilians do not speak this tense, an -aram you HEAR is always the plain perfeito. The ambiguity is a reading problem only.
Pitfalls, and what Brazilians actually say
Pitfall 1: trying to USE it. Do not. Say tinha falado. A Brazilian who hears Eu já comera will assume you are quoting a novel or making a joke — outside quem me dera, pudera, tomara que and quisera eu, the tense is not spoken here. Pitfall 2: confusing it with the futuro do subjuntivo, which you met in lesson 37. Compare falar, falares, falar, falarmos, falarem (futuro do subjuntivo) with falara, falaras, falara, faláramos, falaram (mais-que-perfeito simples). The subjuntivo endings carry no a in the singular; this tense always does. Quando ele falar = when he speaks; Ele falara = he had spoken. Pitfall 3: fora. It is the mais-que-perfeito of ser and of ir, and it is also the everyday adverb meaning outside, and the preposition in fora isso = apart from that, and the shout at every Brazilian protest, Fora! = out! Context does all the work: Estava fora = he was outside; Já fora ao Rio = he had already gone to Rio. Pitfall 4: vira. Verb form (had seen), yes, but also the imperative of virar — Vira a página = turn the page — and the first half of vira-lata, the affectionate Brazilian word for a mutt. Pitfall 5: dropping the accent on the nós form. faláramos without its accent is not a word. Pitfall 6: assuming the tense is dead and skipping it. It is dead in speech and thoroughly alive in print, and the whole point of learning it is that a page of Machado or a lead paragraph in the Folha stops being a puzzle. Pitfall 7, register: if you want the past-before-past to sound formal in your own WRITING, reach for havia plus the participle — havia chegado, havia dito. That is the polished Brazilian option, and it costs you nothing.
