Future & conditional

Both are built by adding endings to the whole infinitive, not to a stem.

Only three verbs are irregular, and they all shorten the stem: dizer → direi, fazer → farei, trazer → trarei.

Nobody uses the future

In speech, the future tense is largely reserved for writing and for solemnity. Everyday Portuguese says ir + infinitive:

Vou falar com ele amanhã. — I'll speak to him tomorrow.

And the conditional loses out to the imperfect, as described in Past tenses: queria, not quereria.

The subjunctive, briefly

Portuguese uses it more than French does and keeps a tense French lost.

• Present subjunctive after wanting, doubting, hoping: Espero que venhas.
• Imperfect subjunctive in unreal conditions: Se eu fosse rico…
• Future subjunctive — the rare one — after quando, se and assim que about the future: Quando chegares, telefona.

That last is genuinely unusual. Spanish and Italian have lost it; Portuguese uses it every day, and getting it wrong is one of the clearest markers of a foreign speaker.

The personal infinitive

Portuguese alone among Romance languages can conjugate an infinitive:

É melhor saíres agora. — It's better that you leave now.

It carries the subject without needing a subjunctive clause, and there is no equivalent in any other language on this site.

Same chapter in: English · French · Spanish · German · Italian · Georgian · Russian · Hindi · Mandarin Chinese · Cantonese · Vietnamese · Korean · Japanese · Malay · Turkish