the Preterit Indicative ~ar verbs

The Preterit Indicative is "the simple past tense"

Ready to move on the past tenses? Start here, with the Preterit Indicative. I call it the simple past because it's the clearest, simplest verb tense (*a verb tense describes a time that something happened.) in Portuguese. Hang around here a bit and you will meet the others. There are several Portuguese tenses used to talk about different kinds of action in the past! The Preterit Indicative always describes action that is over & done. Period.

Yesterday, I had dinner with my girlfriend.
We went to the movies.
I wanted to watch a comedy.
We got there late.

Over & done. Simple.

Forming the Preterit Indicative for ~ar ending verbs

The ~ar verbs are the most consistent.

to speak	falar
I said	eu fal	ei
you/he/she said	você/ele/ela fal	ou
we said	nós fal	amos
they/you all said	eles/elas fal	aram

Let's use it.

BTW, here's a great list of THE most common verbs that exist in the Portuguese language.

There are several irregulars you need to know. I've made a list of the most important irregular verbs in the simple past tense here. But lets' look at two irregulars that end in ~ar.

chegar

Chegar is only irregular in the first person, singular: cheguei.
Don't be tricked by the "u". It does nothing to affect the pronunciation.

dar

Dar is hopelessly irregular.

eu dei
você ele, ela deu
nós demos
vocês, eles, elas deram

Vamos! O Pretérito Indicativo em contexto.

Lot's more examples in my other posts:
Simple Past ~er verbs
Simple Past ~ir verbs
Simple Past ser,ir
Simple Past ter, dizer, fazer
Simple past ~irregular verbs
The Portuguese past tenses