poder — can, to be able to

How to use poder in Brazilian Portuguese

Poder is the Brazilian Portuguese verb for can, to be able to. It is an irregular verb: 5 of its forms in the three tenses below break the regular -er pattern (posso, pude, pôde, pudemos, puderam), 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 posso — I can. The pretérito perfeito is the finished past, the English simple past: eu pude — I could / was able to. The pretérito imperfeito is for habits, background and how things used to be: eu podia — I used to be able to / could. Because poder 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 possa — that I can — and the imperfeito do subjuntivo, the tense of hypotheticals: eu pudesse — if I could.

Said the Rio way, posso sounds like POH-soo. The nós form podemos ends in the carioca “sh”, poh-DEH-moosh — the most recognisable sound of the Rio accent, where São Paulo says a plain s. Notice pode is PAW-djee: in Brazil a final -de softens to “jee” and -te to “chee”, something European Portuguese never does.