querer — to want

How to use querer in Brazilian Portuguese

Querer is the Brazilian Portuguese verb for to want. It is an irregular verb: 4 of its forms in the three tenses below break the regular -er pattern (quer, quis, quisemos, quiseram), 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 quero — I want. The pretérito perfeito is the finished past, the English simple past: eu quis — I wanted. The pretérito imperfeito is for habits, background and how things used to be: eu queria — I wanted / I'd like (polite). Because querer 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 queira — that I want — and the imperfeito do subjuntivo, the tense of hypotheticals: eu quisesse — if I wanted.

Said the Rio way, quero sounds like KEH-roo. The nós form queremos ends in the carioca “sh”, keh-REH-moosh — the most recognisable sound of the Rio accent, where São Paulo says a plain s.