FUI in Portuguese – the past tense of IR

IR has to be one of the most satisfying verbs to speak in the past (preterit) tense. SAY IT: eu fui (FOO-EY), você foi (FOY).

FUI & FOI - these are how you express went.
I went (fui), you/he/she went (fui). It's the past tense for action that is DONE, DONE, DONE. (the complete conjugation of IR.)

Phun!

We've posted about IR before, but this time I want to just focus on the preterit tense.

Here's the conjugation table. You should already have heard the singular versions fui & foi. The plurals, nós fomos & vocês/eles/elas foram will take some getting used to.

IR: getting to FUI

to go (*note that the conjugation of SER and IR in this tense is identical!)

Everyone gets this confused with the same tense of the verb SER. That's because they conjugate exactly the same! You can use this to your advantage actually. In English we have to decide whether to say, for example: The class went really well OR, The class was really good. In Portuguese this is easy because whether you say was (SER) or went (IR), the conjugation is the same:

Now let's see some more examples: