"Eu pensei que você fosse um médico."

Translation: I thought you were a doctor.

[GuilleGiovagnoli]

wouldn't the most accurate translation for "i thought you were a doctor" be "eu pensei que voce era um médico"? Wouldn't "fosse" be more like "i thought you would be a doctor"? I've seen this in other sentences too, as well as using words with -sse when the termination -ria sounds more obvious...

[TiagoMoita_PT]

Both are correct, in my opinion. Well, it all depends on the context, which is always absent in these sentences. I think if the person is talking about the remote past, than he would more likely use "era".
Also, "fosse" sounds more formal to me.

[antlane]

"era" is spoken language; 'que você ...' is a subordinated sentence, it requires a subjunctive verb. Eu pensei que você viesse ( I thought that you would come***) , in spoken language - Eu pensei que você vinha. I thought you would be a doctor = Eu pensei que você seria um médico ( que você se tornaria um médico)

[emeyr]

Eu pensei que você viesse. = I thought that you would come [but you didn't].

[antlane]

editei E. (***) thanks

[TygerK]

How do you say, "I thought that you WOULD BE a doctor." (Describing to a person your guess about what job you thought the person would grow up to be.)

'Eu pensei que você SERIA um médico'

Is that correct?

[TygerK]

antlane just answered my question above:

"I thought you would be a doctor = Eu pensei que você seria um médico ( que você se tornaria um médico)"

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

[Squonkalini]

Does this imply that the person is in fact not a doctor?

[emeyr]

He may not be a doctor. The use of the Portuguese subjunctive can imply that what you thought to be true at the time was mistaken.

[Squonkalini]

Thanks, emeyr!

[Frencesca]

I'm slowly becoming frustrated with past tense conjugations: foi is both went (to go) and were (to be) and I don't get why fosse is also were.

[Pantodynamos]

http://www.conjuga-me.net/verbo-ser

[asherbennaphtali]

I thought indefinite articles were not used with "ser" when describing someone's profession.

So why doesn't the Portuguese say "... que você fosse médico"?

[slearch]

What's the difference between using foi and fosse here?

[Frencesca]

I would like to know that too!!

[kjw860]

I think fosse is maybe the subjunctive tense but we haven't covered that yet so not sure why it's here! So 'foi um medico' would be 'you were (definitely) a doctor', whereas 'pensei que fosse um medico' would be 'i thought you were (maybe) a doctor (but I wasn't sure)'. Not sure if that is the case or not though as basing this purely on spanish and french- maybe a native speaker would be able to clear it up for us?

[TiagoMoita_PT]

That is right. FOI is the simple past, FOSSE is the subjunctive.

• He was = Ele foi
• If he were = Se ele fosse

Whenever you have "que" or "se" (and "quando", if you're talking about the future), you use the subjunctive, which comprises three different tenses, according to these prepositions.

[delvi]

Tiago, just a point of English... one would not say "he were" one would say "he was" "if he were" is correct, but not "he were." :)

[Danmoller]

One would use "were" indeed in "if clauses" for English also has the subjunctive mood:

[Duo2012]

You are right. I saw this sentence in the Past Subjunctive skill.

[ElaineBray]

The accents are too small for me to see so i can only make slow progress with them

[MurilloKubinhetz]

I'm brazilian, why do we use were instead of was in this one?

[emeyr]

"I thought you were a doctor" is indicative in the simple past.
Although the Portuguese requires the subjunctive in a counterfactual sentence after "pensar" in the past tense, that is not the case in English.

• I thought you were a doctor.
• I thought he was a doctor.
• They thought we were doctors.
• He thought they were doctors.