comer — to eat

How to use comer in Brazilian Portuguese

Comer is the Brazilian Portuguese verb for to eat. It is a regular -er verb, so once you know the endings there are no surprises.

Three tenses do almost all the work in conversation. The presente covers the present and the near future: eu como — I eat. The pretérito perfeito is the finished past, the English simple past: eu comi — I ate. The pretérito imperfeito is for habits, background and how things used to be: eu comia — I used to eat / was eating. Because comer 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 coma — that I eat — and the imperfeito do subjuntivo, the tense of hypotheticals: eu comesse — if I ate.

Said the Rio way, como sounds like KOH-moo. The nós form comemos ends in the carioca “sh”, koh-MEH-moosh — the most recognisable sound of the Rio accent, where São Paulo says a plain s.