trabalhar — to work

How to use trabalhar in Brazilian Portuguese

Trabalhar is the Brazilian Portuguese verb for to work. 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 trabalho — I work. The pretérito perfeito is the finished past, the English simple past: eu trabalhei — I worked. The pretérito imperfeito is for habits, background and how things used to be: eu trabalhava — I used to work / was working. Because trabalhar 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 trabalhe — that I work — and the imperfeito do subjuntivo, the tense of hypotheticals: eu trabalhasse — if I worked.

Said the Rio way, trabalho sounds like trah-BAH-lyoo. The nós form trabalhamos ends in the carioca “sh”, trah-bah-LYAH-moosh — the most recognisable sound of the Rio accent, where São Paulo says a plain s.