sentir — to feel

How to use sentir in Brazilian Portuguese

Sentir is the Brazilian Portuguese verb for to feel. It is an irregular verb: 1 of its forms in the three tenses below break the regular -ir pattern (sinto), 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 sinto — I feel. The pretérito perfeito is the finished past, the English simple past: eu senti — I felt. The pretérito imperfeito is for habits, background and how things used to be: eu sentia — I used to feel / was feeling. Because sentir 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 sinta — that I feel — and the imperfeito do subjuntivo, the tense of hypotheticals: eu sentisse — if I felt.

Said the Rio way, sinto sounds like SEEN-too. The nós form sentimos ends in the carioca “sh”, sen-CHEE-moosh — the most recognisable sound of the Rio accent, where São Paulo says a plain s. Notice sente is SEN-chee: in Brazil a final -de softens to “jee” and -te to “chee”, something European Portuguese never does.