percebíeis

Percebíeis is the second-person plural imperfect indicative form of the Portuguese verb perceber, meaning to perceive or to understand. It expresses a past action or state that was ongoing or habitual, and is used with the archaic second-person plural pronoun vós. In English, it corresponds to “you all were perceiving” or “you all perceived.”

Etymology and morphology: perceive comes from the Latin percipere, formed with the prefix per- and capere (to take). In Portuguese, the imperfect endings for -er verbs with vós include -íeis, giving perceber the form percebíeis in this tense. The spelling and accent mark the stressed syllable in this archaic or literary variant.

Usage and regional variation: Percebíeis is primarily found in European Portuguese, especially in literary, historical, or religious texts where the pronoun vós is preserved. In contemporary Brazilian Portuguese, the vós form is almost never used in everyday speech; speakers instead use vocês percebiam or vocês estavam percebendo to convey the same past sense. Percebíeis remains a marker of formal or historical register in many modern contexts.

Examples:

- Vós percebíeis as mudanças antes que elas se tornassem evidentes.

- Naquela época, vós percebíeis que algo não estava certo.

Related forms include the other Portuguese conjugations of perceber in the imperfect (percebíeis, percebia, percebiam) and related nouns such as percepção and percepção.