Irregular Verbs in Portuguese – OUVIR and PEDIR

Today I am continuing the series of blog posts about the Irregular Verbs in Portuguese and my special guests are the verbs ouvir and pedir.

As you know, verbs in Portuguese can either finish in -ar, -er or -ir and each of these endings leads to a different conjugation. Our friends today belong to the third conjugation — the -ir conjugation — and they are fun because they are irregular, but not completely.

In fact, some irregular verbs, such as the ones discussed today, are only irregular in the first person singular. The rest of the persons follow all the rules of the regular verbs, and therefore it is useful to know the regular conjugation for the -ir conjugation, in this case.

Present Conjugation of OUVIR and PEDIR

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OUVIR
PERSON	CONJUGATION
Eu	ouço
Tu	ouves
Você/ Ele/ Ela	ouve
Nós	ouvimos
Vocês	ouvem
Eles/ Elas	ouvem

PEDIR
PERSON	CONJUGATION
Eu	peço
Tu	pedes
Você/ Ele/ Ela	pede
Nós	pedimos
Vocês	pedem
Eles/ Elas	pedem

How it works

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As you can see on the tables, it is true! These verbs have an irregular first person singular and the rest of the persons are totally and utterly regular!

If you want to compare it to a regular verb, you can check the Present Simple of the verb abrir.

Furthermore, you can see that the letter “v” in ouvir and the letter “d” in pedir are substituted by a “ç”. This means that both words – ouço and peço – are pronounced with a soft “c” sound. As you may remember from my post about pronunciation, the “ç” sound, is the equivalent to the sound “s” in “say”, for example.

I wish I could tell you that this is a thing that all -ir irregular verbs do, or even that ONLY -ir irregular verbs do, but that is not true. Remember the verb fazer?

The good news is, you can make a list with the Portuguese verbs that change ONLY the first person singular. For those verbs – including these two we spoke about today – you will only have to remember the irregular person by heart, since all the other person are regular and behaving well 😉

Meaning of Ouvir and Pedir

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I do not want to go away without telling you the meaning of these two friends.

Ouvir means “to hear” or “to listen”. So, if you want to translate a sentence like “Do you hear the music?”, you would translate it something like “Ouves a música?”. But, if you want to translate “Do you listen to music?”, you would also use the same verb, as follows “Ouves música?”.

Pedir means “to ask for” or “to order”, if you are at a restaurant and want to order food, for example.

You can say something like “I ask for forgiveness” (literally, or “I am sorry”, not so literally) as follows “peço perdão”. On the other hand, you can also say “I order the food”, which in Portuguese would translate as “Eu peço a comida”.

Exercises

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Now that you know ouvir and pedir, I would like to ask – or pedir – if you can complete the following exercises.

1. Eu _______ (fazer) um favor ao Hugo.
2. Tu _______ (ouvir) sempre música muito alto!
3. Ele ______ (pedir) sempre um café e uma torrada.
4. ________ (ouvir) este barulho? O que é?
5. ________ (pedir) dinheiro a toda a gente!
6. Vocês __________ (ouvir) música pop?
7. Eles _________ (pedir) sempre licença antes de entrar.

Do you still remember the regular verbs? Complete with the regular and irregular verb forms of the different verbs.

1. O Jonathan ____________ (falar) com a Ana e depois _____________ (vir) ter connosco.
2. O Gonçalo e a Mafalda ___________ (ser) namorados.
3. As meninas ____________ (comprar) sempre muita coisa nesta loja.
4. Os senhores ___________ (pedir) muitas vezes água natural para beber.
5. Os trabalhadores ____________ o que o chefe tem para dizer.
6. Ele ___________ (dizer) muitas coisas acertadas!
7. A boneca ____________ (estar) em cima da cama.

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And that’s it! You did it!

I hope you enjoyed this post about the irregular verbs in Portuguese, today featuring ouvir and pedir with all their similarities and little quirks!

Do not forget to check the solutions below, before you go! Let me know in the comment section below how many answers you got right 🙂

Also, if you want to learn more about European Portuguese make sure to check out my online courses.

See you soon! Beijinhos,

Mia.

Solutions

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Now that you know ouvir and pedir, I would like to ask – or pedir – if you can complete the following exercises.

1. Eu faço um favor ao Hugo.
2. Tu ouves sempre música muito alto!
3. Ele pede sempre um café e uma torrada.
4. Ouves este barulho? O que é?
5. Pedes dinheiro a toda a gente!
6. Vocês ouvem música pop?
7. Eles pedem sempre licença antes de entrar.

Do you still remember the regular verbs? Complete with the regular and irregular verb forms of the different verbs.

1. O Jonathan fala (falar) com a Ana e depois vem (vir) ter connosco.
2. O Gonçalo e a Mafalda são (ser) namorados.
3. As meninas compram (comprar) sempre muita coisa nesta loja.
4. Os senhores pedem (pedir) muitas vezes água natural para beber.
5. Os trabalhadores ouvem o que o chefe tem para dizer.
6. Ele diz (dizer) muitas coisas acertadas!
7. A boneca está (estar) em cima da cama.