perder — to lose

How to use perder in Brazilian Portuguese

Perder is the Brazilian Portuguese verb for to lose. It is an irregular verb: 1 of its forms in the three tenses below break the regular -er pattern (perco), and those are the ones to learn by heart.

Three tenses do almost all the work in conversation. The presente covers the present and the near future: eu perco — I lose. The pretérito perfeito is the finished past, the English simple past: eu perdi — I lost / missed. The pretérito imperfeito is for habits, background and how things used to be: eu perdia — I used to lose / was losing. Because perder 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 perca — that I lose — and the imperfeito do subjuntivo, the tense of hypotheticals: eu perdesse — if I lost.

Said the Rio way, perco sounds like PEHR-koo. The nós form perdemos ends in the carioca “sh”, pehr-DEH-moosh — the most recognisable sound of the Rio accent, where São Paulo says a plain s. Notice perde is PEHR-djee: in Brazil a final -de softens to “jee” and -te to “chee”, something European Portuguese never does.