parar — to stop

How to use parar in Brazilian Portuguese

Parar is the Brazilian Portuguese verb for to stop. 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 paro — I stop. The pretérito perfeito is the finished past, the English simple past: eu parei — I stopped. The pretérito imperfeito is for habits, background and how things used to be: eu parava — I used to stop / was stopping. Because parar 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 pare — that I stop — and the imperfeito do subjuntivo, the tense of hypotheticals: eu parasse — if I stopped.

Said the Rio way, paro sounds like PAH-roo. The nós form paramos ends in the carioca “sh”, pah-RAH-moosh — the most recognisable sound of the Rio accent, where São Paulo says a plain s.