Time Within Words

Some words last longer than matter. And some silences say more than any sentence. Between the two, we move with attentive senses, as if tracing time through language. Time, yes, resides within words. It lives in their roots, their inflections, their absences. Every conjugated verb, every tense we choose, is a way of choosing how to exist.

In Portuguese, we say "estou com saudade" — I am with longing — not "I have longing". Longing is not possession, it is a state. In French, the verb "être" is intertwined with time and identity. In English, "to be" is both being and existing. Each language makes us choose how to stand in time — whether we are passing through, belonging, or resisting. Learning a language is also learning how to narrate time differently.

As a translator and teacher, I see how verb tenses become mirrors of our relationship with existence. The past, the future, the continuous present — they are all ways of inhabiting reality. Some learners cling to the present tense, where they feel safe; others explore the conditional, where there is space for dreaming, for hypotheses, for what could have been.

When I teach, I do not simply offer verb tables. I offer lenses. Teaching grammar is, in this way, teaching philosophy. Helping someone say "I was," "I will be," "I would have been" is guiding them through their path, their longing, their destiny. Each verb tense becomes a window into inner time.

Fragmentos do Verbo is born from such encounters: where language ceases to be tool and becomes mirror. Where the fragmented verb reveals us whole. Because in the end, to study a language is to study oneself. And each tense we learn is time regained.