Index / Language / Records / Portuguese / Grammar
How you say something is happening now. One word tells a listener which country you learned in.
The control text · practical
Bom dia. No dia 12 deste mês, foi debitada da minha conta uma cobrança de R$ 89,90 que eu não reconheço. Cancelei esse serviço em maio e guardei o comprovante. Estou pedindo o estorno do valor e a confirmação, por escrito, de que a assinatura foi encerrada. Se não houver retorno até sexta-feira, vou registrar uma reclamação no Procon. Fico no aguardo.
Where the two part
Brazilian · the base
estar + gerund, without exception, and the gerund spreads into constructions Portugal finds odd.
European · the contrast
estar a + infinitive is standard; the gerund in this slot sounds Brazilian or Azorean. Both norms keep the gerund in adverbial clauses.
10 options
Estou pedindo o estorno do valor.
The tellA verb ending in -ndo after estar.
Anchor A already uses it. Universal in Brazil and impossible to get wrong there.
Marked wrong in DAPLE, where it is the clearest single Brazilianism in a script.
Estou a pedir o estorno do valor.
The tella plus a bare infinitive after estar.
Required for DAPLE and the fastest way to make a whole paragraph read as European.
In Brazil it is instantly foreign, and there is no register in which a Brazilian would produce it.
BR Peço o estorno do valor.
EU Peço o reembolso do montante.
The tellNo progressive at all; the present tense carries it.
Correct in both countries, more formal than either progressive, and it sidesteps the whole split.
It loses the sense of something under way, which in a complaint is doing real work.
Tendo cancelado em maio, guardei o comprovante.
The tellA gerund that is not after estar — it is modifying the whole clause.
Correct in both standards. This is the gerund Portugal has no objection to.
Overused at the start of sentences it becomes a tic, and it can leave the subject genuinely ambiguous.
A cobrança vai aumentando a cada mês.
The tellir plus gerund, meaning gradual increase rather than the future.
Expresses gradual change in one construction where English needs a phrase.
Easily misread as the near future by a learner, and by an examiner if the context is thin.
Venho tentando resolver isso desde maio.
The tellvir plus gerund: an action running from the past into the present.
Precisely what a complaint needs, and it is correct in both standards.
Its aspect is easy to confuse with the compound perfect, which does something similar but not identical.
Ando pedindo esse estorno há semanas.
The tellandar plus gerund, with a note of irritation built in.
Carries attitude as well as aspect, which no neutral construction does.
Colloquial in both countries, so it drops the register of anything it appears in.
Eles ficam mandando a mesma resposta.
The tellficar plus gerund: it keeps happening and the speaker is not pleased.
The most natural way to complain about repetition, and unmistakably native when used well.
Firmly conversational. In writing it reads as griping rather than as a statement of fact.
Está a chover. — heard in parts of the North and in older speech
The tellThe European construction in a Brazilian mouth.
Worth knowing that the split is not perfectly clean before treating it as a national border.
Its distribution in Brazil is not verified here, so it is flagged unverified. Do not build on it.
BR Tenho pedido o estorno desde maio.
EU Tenho pedido o reembolso desde maio.
The tellter + participle. It does not mean I have asked; it means I have kept asking.
The construction English speakers most reliably get wrong, and getting it right is a visible C1 marker.
Its meaning is genuinely different from the English perfect, so it cannot be reached for by translation.