VERBS - FIRST CONJUGATION

Verbs are often described as 'doing words', in that they signify some form of action. Although this is true, there are some verbs that do not relate to obvious actions.


First Conjugation Verbs
To help you consolidate this, here is another conjugation of a verb – given in both English and Portuguese.  The Portuguese verb ‘pensar’ means ‘to think’, and because it ends with ‘ar’, it is a first conjugation verb.
English:  To think-pensar                      to work-trabalhar
I think                                           I work              
you  think                                      you work              
he, she, it  thinks                            he, she, it works            
we think                                        we work                                    
you think                                       you work
they think                                      they  work


eu penso                                        eu trabalho
você pensa                                     você trabalha
ele/ela pensa                                            ele/ela trabalha
nós pensamos                                          nós trabalhamos
vocês pensam                                          vocês trabalham
eles/elas pensam                                    eles/elas trabalham                           


Note that the endings of the conjugations are the same as the previous example.  The Portuguese verbs trabalhar and pensar are both regular verbs of the first conjugation (ie. they are regular, and end in ‘ar’), so the endings attached to the stem (in the case of pensar, the stem is ‘pens’) are the same.  All regular verbs that end in ‘ar’ will follow exactly the same pattern.  The stem is always the infinitive minus the last 2 letters (well, nearly always – I’ll explain the exceptions in a minute), and the endings will always be as above.

Even though in Portuguese the verb form changes for each 'person', and in English it changes for the third person singular, there are some letters which are always there – for example, in Portuguese, all of the forms of 'trabalhar ' start with the letters 'trabalh'.  This portion of the word is known as the 'stem' – and for regular verbs, it remains the same regardless of the conjugation or tense.  Irregular verbs however, can change radically (in which case they are referred to as ‘radical-changing’ or ‘stem-changing’ verbs) – the different forms might not bear any resemblance to each other!


Almost all infinitives in Portuguese end with either 'ar', 'er', or 'ir' – even for irregular verbs.  The most common ending is 'ar', and the least common is 'ir'.  These different types of verb are categorised:  'ar' verbs are referred to as 'the first conjugation', 'er' verbs are 'the second conjugation', and 'ir' verbs are the 'third conjugation'. 

A handful of verbs have an infinitive ending with ‘or’ (eg. pôr, compor), but these are so rare that they do not qualify for a category of their own.  They have evolved from 2^nd conjugation verbs (‘pôr’) so they are still classed as belonging to the 2^nd conjugation.