voltar — to return

How to use voltar in Brazilian Portuguese

Voltar is the Brazilian Portuguese verb for to return. 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 volto — I return / come back. The pretérito perfeito is the finished past, the English simple past: eu voltei — I returned / came back. The pretérito imperfeito is for habits, background and how things used to be: eu voltava — I used to return / come back / was returning. Because voltar 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 volte — that I return / come back — and the imperfeito do subjuntivo, the tense of hypotheticals: eu voltasse — if I returned.

Said the Rio way, volto sounds like VOW-too. The nós form voltamos ends in the carioca “sh”, vow-TAH-moosh — the most recognisable sound of the Rio accent, where São Paulo says a plain s.