encontrar — to find, to meet

How to use encontrar in Brazilian Portuguese

Encontrar is the Brazilian Portuguese verb for to find, to meet. It is a regular -ar 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 encontro — I find / meet. The pretérito perfeito is the finished past, the English simple past: eu encontrei — I found / met. The pretérito imperfeito is for habits, background and how things used to be: eu encontrava — I used to meet / find. Because encontrar 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 encontre — that I find / meet — and the imperfeito do subjuntivo, the tense of hypotheticals: eu encontrasse — if I found / met.

Said the Rio way, encontro sounds like en-KOHN-troo. The nós form encontramos ends in the carioca “sh”, en-kohn-TRAH-moosh — the most recognisable sound of the Rio accent, where São Paulo says a plain s.