No. 484 in Portuguese
começar
To begin; to start.
In a sentence
Eu vou começar um novo curso na semana que vem.
I will start a new course next week.
In this sentence, 'começar' is used in its infinitive form to denote the initiation of an action (starting a course) in the near future. It is preceded by the auxiliary verb 'vou', which indicates future tense.
O espetáculo começou às oito da noite.
The show started at eight in the evening.
Here, 'começar' is in the past tense (pretérito perfeito), indicating an action (the beginning of the show) that occurred at a specific moment in the past.
Você pode começar o projeto por esta parte.
You can start the project with this part.
In this example, 'começar' is in its infinitive form after the modal verb 'pode', suggesting permission or ability to initiate an action (starting the project).
Hear it in real podcasts
The recording above is a synthetic voice. Hear how people say “começar” in actual Portuguese podcasts.
Find “começar” in podcastsLearn it from shows you like
LangTurbo plays Portuguese podcasts with a transcript and the English under every line. Tap a word like this one and it tells you what it means right there. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Learning English?
LangTurbo plays real English podcasts with every line translated into português, and tells you what any word means in that sentence. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Portuguese books and courses on Amazon (an affiliate link: a purchase through it supports this site).