What this is about
Portuguese verbs come in three families, named by their endings: -AR, -ER, -IR. The -AR family is by far the biggest — thousands of verbs — and they ALL conjugate identically. Learn the pattern once with falar (to speak) and you instantly own morar, trabalhar, estudar, gostar, viajar, dançar, jogar, and every -AR verb you will ever meet.
FALAR — present
How the machine works
Cut off -ar, attach the ending: -o · -a · -amos · -am. That's the whole system:
| morar → eu moro em Londres | to live |
| trabalhar → ela trabalha muito | to work |
| estudar → nós estudamos português | to study |
| viajar → eles viajam sempre | to travel |
One present, three English meanings
Eu falo covers "I speak", "I am speaking" AND "I do speak". Portuguese does not need "do/does" for questions or negatives either:
| Você fala inglês? | DO you speak English? — just raise your voice, no extra word |
| Ela não trabalha hoje. | she DOESN'T work today — just não |
Details worth knowing
1 · The nós form (falamos) is spelled the same in present and past — context (hoje/ontem) tells you which.
2 · A few -AR verbs change spelling in the past eu-form to keep their sound (dançar → dancei) — that story is in Lição 5.
3 · Verbs whose stem ends in a vowel still follow the machine: passear → eu passeio comes later; don't worry about it now.
Practise this chapter
0 pool questions plus generated ones — 20 fresh practice questions, reshuffled every visit, inside the grammar library.
Practise Regular -AR verbs (present) — 20 questions →This chapter is taught in Lição 2 of the course — free, no account needed. Rumo is a complete Brazilian Portuguese course, A1 to B2; level A1 is free.