What this is about
Six verbs refuse the regular past endings — and they happen to be the six most useful verbs in the language: ser, ir, estar, ter, fazer, plus the querer/poder pair. There is no trick to derive them; you memorize them like phone numbers you actually call every day.
SER & IR — one shared past!
ESTAR — past
TER — past
FAZER — past
querer & poder
| quis · quis · quisemos · quiseram | wanted |
| pude · pôde · pudemos · puderam | could / managed to |
In the wild
| Fui para a praia. / Fui professor. | went (ir) / was (ser) — destination vs identity tells you which |
| Tivemos uma semana difícil. | we had… |
| Estive no Rio em janeiro. | I was in Rio (location → estar) |
| Não pude ir, mas quis! | I couldn't go, but I wanted to! |
Exceptions & details
1 · ser = ir in the past. Really. Fui is both "I was" and "I went" — Brazilians disambiguate by context without thinking.
2 · teve vs esteve: having → ter (teve), being somewhere → estar (esteve). "Ela teve na praia" is a classic learner error.
3 · fiz, fez — no vowel ending at all in the singular. Você fez tudo? Fiz!
4 · These six also power set phrases: Foi ótimo! (it was great!), Fez calor ontem (it was hot).
Practise this chapter
4 pool questions plus generated ones — 20 fresh practice questions, reshuffled every visit, inside the grammar library.
Practise Irregular pasts: fui, tive, fiz… — 20 questions →This chapter is taught in Lição 6 of the course — free, no account needed. Rumo is a complete Brazilian Portuguese course, A1 to B2; level A1 is free.