Pronouns and forms of address

This chapter contains the single largest simplification available in Brazilian Portuguese. Read it before any verb chapter.

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Grammar

1. The three-form system

Textbook Portuguese has six persons. Spoken Brazilian Portuguese uses three verb forms. Here is why:

• tu has been replaced by você almost everywhere — and você takes the third-person singular verb form, the same as ele.
• nós has been replaced by a gente in ordinary speech — and a gente is grammatically singular, so it also takes the third-person singular form.
• vós does not exist.

So the six-row table collapses:

Three forms. falo, fala, falam. Everything in this handbook is built on that.

nós falamos is correct, common in writing, and you should recognise it. You do not need to produce it. a gente fala is what people say.

2. Formality

Far lighter than German or European Portuguese.

o senhor and a senhora also take form 2 — the same verb as você. Switching register costs you nothing grammatically.

Two more address words worth having: - moço / moça — how you get a young server's or clerk's attention. Not rude. - senhor / senhora alone, as a vocative: Com licença, senhor.

3. Possessives

Possessives agree with the thing owned, not the owner.

meu (MEH-oo), minha (MEE-nyah), seu (SEH-oo), sua (SOO-ah), nosso (NAW-soo)

The seu problem. seu is ambiguous — it can mean your or his/her. Brazilians solve this by using dele / dela for third persons:

Note that dele goes after the noun. This is the normal Brazilian pattern and you should copy it — it removes the ambiguity entirely.

With family and body parts, Brazilians often drop the possessive altogether and use the article: Estou com dor **na** cabeça — literally "I'm with pain in the head."

4. Object pronouns — the spoken shortcut

Formal written Portuguese has object pronouns (o, a, lhe) with complicated placement rules. Skip them. Spoken Brazilian Portuguese uses the ordinary subject pronoun in object position:

You do need two object pronouns, because there is no shortcut for them:

• me (mee) — me
• te (chee) — you

Both go before the verb: Me ajuda, Ele me falou, Te vejo amanhã.

This deletes an entire painful chapter. The written forms are recognition-only.

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Examples

The three forms in action

a gente = we

Note the verb is always singular. Never a gente vamos.

Formal address

Possessives

Object pronouns

After a preposition

Prepositions take mim (meeng) and você, not eu:

One irregular worth memorising: com + mim → comigo (koh-MEE-goo) = with me. Likewise com você → contigo (rare in Brazil; com você is fine).

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What to take from this chapter

1. Three verb forms, not six. falo / fala / falam.
2. a gente is we, and it takes the singular verb.
3. você for everyone; o senhor / a senhora when in doubt about age or authority.
4. dele / dela after the noun, not seu, for third-person possession.
5. me and te before the verb. Everything else: use ele / ela as the object.