The Focus of this Lesson is Agreement Between Nouns and Verbs
Mas não fica triste!
"But don't get sad."

Why do you need to conjugate verbs in Portuguese in the first place?

Noun-verb agreement

Noun-verb agreement is the reason that verbs need to be conjugated. Noun-verb agreement just means that the verb indicates the same number of nouns as are actually being talked about. For example, Eu jogo futebol. ("I play soccer.") has correct noun-verb agreement. The verb jogo indicates the first person, "I," which is what eu is. However, if we change jogo to joga we get Eu joga futebol. which means "I plays soccer."

Notice how the English sounds strange. It sounds equally strange in Portuguese. This is because of incorrect noun-verb agreement. Joga indicates the second person and therefore doesn't "agree" with eu. This error is small enough that Brazilians will still be able to understand you.

As you can see both the English and Portuguese have subject-verb agreement. However, in Portuguese noun-verb agreement is much more frequent.

For example, if we were to change joga to jogamos we'd get Eu jogamos futebol. ("I play soccer.")

This is an example of why exact translations can be deceptive. Here, the English is correct but the Portuguese is quite incomprehensible. A Brazilian would not be able to understand what you meant.

Another example from the dialogue is:

Eles têm os melhores artilheiros mas não conseguem fazer gol. - "They have the best forwards but they can't score goals."

Here we have two verbs in one sentence and both agree with the different subjects. The two verbs, têm and conseguem, are conjugated to agree with eles and artilheiros respectively. If you changed eles to ele you would have to re-conjugate the verb têm. Here's what that sentence would look like:

Ele tem os melhores artilheiros mas não conseguem fazer gol. - "He has the best forwards but they can't make goals."

If we were to change artilheiros to artilheiro we'd have to change conseguem to consegue to maintain the noun-verb agreement.

Here's what that sentence would look like:

Ele tem o melhor artilheiro mas não consegue fazer gol. - "He has the best forward but he can't score goals."

Sample Sentences

1. Falar - Elas falam demais!
   "They talk too much!"
2. Cantar - Eu não canto bem.
   "I don't sing well."

Lesson Review

In this lesson, we examined one of the fundamental reasons why verb conjugation exists.

And that reason is noun-verb agreement, which is when the number of items indicated by the verb is the same as the number of items in reality. 

parece que
The literal translation is "it seems that," but could also be translated as, "It looks as if."

que decepção
The literal translation is "that deception," but it means something closer to, "How deceiving," or "that is such a deception."

nem um pouco
The literal translation is "not even a little," but more completely it means "not even a little bit." For example, let's say someone asks you, "are you tired?" And you can respond very naturally with nem um pouco "Not even a little bit" or "not at all."

Vasco and Botafogo

Typically when Brazilians start talking about Vasco, they're talking about a specific soccer team. Officially named Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama, this soccer team has the fifth largest fan base of all the soccer teams in Brazil. The name of the team pays homage to the well-known Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama. Yes, he was Portuguese not Spanish. The team's crest includes an image of a caravela, a type of boat in which Vasco da Gama navigated.

The Vasco da Gama club is well known as one of the first major teams to include black people on their teams. They were highly criticized for this move and in 1923 the three other major football teams in Rio—Botafogo, Flamengo, and Fluminense—tried to have Vasco disbanded as a local team. Vasco fought for black rights and in 1926 they won their first championship and have been one of the top-rated teams ever since.

Botafogo is one of the three elite football clubs in Rio de Janeiro and and also participates in basketball, volleyball, and rowing. Botafogo is considered one of the most traditional soccer teams in Rio de Janeiro and during the 2014 World Cup will celebrate 120 years in existence. Its crest is a large black shield with a large white star in the middle.