Portuguese Mesoclisis: Pronouns Inside the Future and Conditional

Formal European Portuguese can put a pronoun inside a verb. It happens only in the future and the conditional, which are built on the whole infinitive, so the pronoun slips into the seam:

• Dar-lhe-ei o livro. - I will give him the book.
• Lavar-se-ia antes de sair. - He would wash before going out.

This is mesoclisis. It is something to read, not to say, and Brazil puts the pronoun in front instead.

The whole system on one screen

Every Portuguese form in the left column is the right column turned inside out. In speech, both countries usually skip the simple future and say vou plus an infinitive.

How it is built

The future is the infinitive plus -ei, -á, -emos, -ão; the conditional is the infinitive plus -ia, -íamos, -iam. The pronoun goes between the two, joined by hyphens:

• Dar-nos-á uma resposta amanhã. - He or she will give us an answer tomorrow.

The irregular stems of the future and the conditional keep their short form: dir-lhe-ei, I will tell him.

With o, a, os, as: comprá-lo-ei

After an infinitive, the pronoun o becomes lo and the infinitive loses its -r; a, os and as become la, los and las the same way. The vowel left at the end takes an accent where it needs one:

Regular -ar verbs take an acute (á), regular -er verbs a circumflex (ê), and -ir verbs nothing. Fazer and dizer work from their short stems, far- and dir-, so they give fá- (with an acute) and di-. Vendê-la-ia is I would sell it or he would sell it: the conditional does not tell eu from ele.

When the pronoun goes in front

Mesoclisis is only the default. In Portugal, as in every other tense, certain words pull the pronoun in front of the verb:

With nothing in front, or only a subject such as ele or o João, the pronoun goes inside: Ele dar-lhe-á o livro.

Brazil: in front of the verb

Brazilian Portuguese puts the pronoun before the verb, in speech and in nearly all writing:

Brazilian legal and official prose still uses mesoclisis now and then, mostly at the start of a sentence, where careful writing does not open with a pronoun: Far-se-á o possível, everything possible will be done.

Mistakes English speakers make

What to do next

1. Read dar-lhe-ei as three pieces until it looks like one verb.
2. Learn the -lo forms: comprá-lo-ei, vendê-lo-ei, fá-lo-ei.
3. Say the Brazilian version aloud instead: vou te dar, ele se lavaria.

Mesoclisis is on the Pearson Edexcel GCSE Portuguese specification at Higher tier, for recognition in reading.