começar — to start, to begin

How to use começar in Brazilian Portuguese

Começar is the Brazilian Portuguese verb for to start, to begin. It is a regular -ar verb, so once you know the endings there are no surprises — only the spelling shifts in comecei to keep the sound of the stem, which is orthography, not irregularity.

Three tenses do almost all the work in conversation. The presente covers the present and the near future: eu começo — I start / begin. The pretérito perfeito is the finished past, the English simple past: eu comecei — I started / began. The pretérito imperfeito is for habits, background and how things used to be: eu começava — I used to start / begin / was starting. Because começar is one of the 58 most-used verbs, the page also has both subjunctives: the presente do subjuntivo, the mood of wishes, doubts and “quero que…” — eu comece — that I start / begin — and the imperfeito do subjuntivo, the tense of hypotheticals: eu começasse — if I started / began.

Said the Rio way, começo sounds like koh-MEH-soo. The nós form começamos ends in the carioca “sh”, koh-meh-SAH-moosh — the most recognisable sound of the Rio accent, where São Paulo says a plain s.