The verb pôr is a common, useful verb in Portuguese, both Brazilian and European. Pôr means ‘to put or place,’ and in it’s reflexive form, pôr-se means to become.
Though useful, the verb is highly irregular, and many forms of the verb are on the difficult side for beginner speakers to pronounce, since they involve much nasalization.
This is the present tense conjugation of the verb:
Eu ponho, Você põe, Nos pomos, Vocês põem
To my mind, this is unnecessarily difficult for the beginner Portuguese learner. The irregular verbs ir, ter, ser, and estar are absolutely necessary, but pôr is avoidable. It seems as though even Brazilians avoid this verb like the plague, except in the present tense Eu and Você forms.
Much easier is to use the -ar verb colocar, which means exactly the same thing: ‘to put or place.’ It is just way easier for a beginner to conjugate a simple -ar verb naturally than to wrestle with the myriad irregular forms of pôr, particularly in the past tenses. Colocar is one of those verbs ending in -car that change in some forms to include a ‘q’ such as eu coloquei i put, but this is hardly as complex as eu pus i put which follows no pattern whatsoever.
Another option, this one more colloquial, is botar to put. Botar is slightly different and is used for specific purposes in addition to the general idea of placement, including ‘putting on’ clothing or shoes, for example.
On form of pôr that is extremely common is posto, the past participled meaning placed. This form is even a common noun with many uses; gas station, for example, is posto de gasolina.
Comments:
Ângela:
Just a little reminder: we don’t officially conjugate verbs using neither “você” nor “vocês” here in Brazil, meaning you won’t find them in Grammars. The use of “você” as a personal pronoun is particularly informal. The correct pronouns used to conjugate verbs in the second persons of singular and plural are, respectively, “tu” and “vós”. That have been said, the correct conjugations are:
Eu ponho
Tu pões
Eles põem
Nós pomos
Vós pondes
Eles põem
nicole:
Actually, only “você” is used in Brazil most of the times, both in formal and informal situations. “Tu” is correctly used just in some regions, in southern Brazil. In other places, it’s misconjugated “tu é”, “tu faz”, instead of “tu és”, “tu fazes”.
In Portugal, however, “você” is considerated very formal, while “tu” is generally used in informal conversation. Young people definetelly dont like to be called “você” in there.
Luis Augusto:
“posto de gasolisa” is about “post”, like, for exemple, “posto avançado” = outpost…
Carolina:
“It seems as though even Brazilians avoid this verb like the plague,”
Hahaha, I am a Brazilian and I can say that´s really true…
There are some “impossible” verb tenses in Portuguese, like the “subjuntivo”, which expresses a kind of possibility, something that hasn´t happened yet, but it is wanted to. The verb pôr, for example, would be:
presente do subjuntivo: eu ponha, tu ponhas, ele ponha, nós ponhamos, vós ponhais, eles ponham.
imperfeito do subjuntivo: eu pusesse, tu pusesses, ele pusesse, nós puséssemos, vós pusésseis, eles puséssem
futuro do subjuntivo: eu puser, tu puseres, ele puser, nós pusermos, vós puserdes, eles puserem.
Isn´t it soooo scary???
Mike:
Hi, this is definitely a strange verb, I believe the only -or verb in the language.
However, it isn’t as scary as it looks if you have studied Spanish. This is simply the verb “poner” with the standard Pt patterns of n –> m (silent, drop it) and ng –> nh, etc .
http://spanish.about.com/library/verbs/blponer.htm