viver — to live (life, experience — vs. morar)

How to use viver in Brazilian Portuguese

Viver is the Brazilian Portuguese verb for to live (life, experience — vs. morar). It is a regular -er 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 vivo — I live (life, experience). The pretérito perfeito is the finished past, the English simple past: eu vivi — I lived (life, experience). The pretérito imperfeito is for habits, background and how things used to be: eu vivia — I used to live / was living (life, experience). Because viver 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 viva — that I live (life, experience) — and the imperfeito do subjuntivo, the tense of hypotheticals: eu vivesse — if I lived (life, experience).

Said the Rio way, vivo sounds like VEE-voo. The nós form vivemos ends in the carioca “sh”, vee-VEH-moosh — the most recognisable sound of the Rio accent, where São Paulo says a plain s.