Portuguese Object Pronouns: Where Brazilians Actually Put Them

Portuguese object pronouns are the small words that stand in for me, you, him, her, us and them when they are on the receiving end of a verb. The chart is short and not especially hard. The interesting part - the part that decides whether you sound Brazilian or like a grammar book - is where they go, because the textbook rule and the way 200 million Brazilians actually speak point in opposite directions.

The textbook puts the pronoun after the verb with a hyphen: Amo-te, I love you. Brazil puts it in front: Eu te amo. This course teaches the Brazilian version, because it is the one you will hear, and it will tell you where the textbook rule still matters.

The chart

A direct object is the thing the verb acts on: she saw me, Ela me viu. An indirect object is the person something is given, said or shown to: he gave a book to me, Ele me deu um livro. Only in the third person do the two look different. me, te and nos do both jobs, so for most of what you say, there is only one word to pick.

o and a agree with the gender of the noun they replace, not with English's idea of it. A car is masculine, so Eu comprei o carro becomes Eu o comprei. And yes, they look exactly like the definite articles o and a. They are the same words doing a second job, and position tells you which one you have: before a noun, it is the; before a verb, it is a pronoun.

Rule one: in Brazil, the pronoun goes before the verb

This is the whole article in one line. In Brazilian Portuguese, the object pronoun sits in front of the verb it belongs to:

Eu te amo. - I love you.

Ela me viu. - She saw me.

Ele nos ajudou. - He helped us.

Não te conheço. - I don't know you.

It goes before the verb even at the very start of a sentence, which the traditional grammar forbids outright:

Me dá isso. - Give me that.

Me liga amanhã. - Call me tomorrow.

Te vejo amanhã. - See you tomorrow.

A Portuguese school grammar will tell you a sentence can never begin with an unstressed pronoun, and that it must be Dá-me isso. Brazilians of every class and education level say Me dá isso, in speech and in text messages, and a Brazilian who said Dá-me isso at a market stall would get a funny look. In formal writing, follow the book. In conversation, follow Brazil.

Rule two: with two verbs, it goes in the middle

When a verb like ir, poder, querer or estar is helping another verb, the Brazilian habit is to put the pronoun between the two, in front of the main verb:

Vou te ligar. - I'll call you.

Posso te ajudar? - Can I help you?

Quero te ver. - I want to see you.

Estou te esperando. - I'm waiting for you.

This is the single most useful pattern in the article, because so much everyday Brazilian Portuguese is vou plus an infinitive. Say Vou te ligar and you sound local; say Vou ligar-te and you sound like you learned from a Lisbon textbook.

Rule three: ele and ela replace o and a in speech

Here is the part that surprises learners most. The third-person pronouns o and a are correct, you will read them constantly, and in everyday Brazilian conversation they have largely disappeared. Brazilians do one of two things instead.

They use the subject pronoun after the verb, as English does:

Eu vi ele ontem. - I saw him yesterday.

Eu conheço ela. - I know her.

Or, when the object is obvious, they drop it altogether:

Você viu o filme? - Vi. - Did you see the film? - I did. (literally: I saw.)

Both are completely natural. Eu vi ele is the sort of thing a grammar book marks as wrong and a native speaker says twenty times a day; the formal Eu o vi sounds like a news bulletin. The honest advice is to recognise o and a when you read, write them in anything formal, and not be startled when every Brazilian you meet uses ele instead.

Lhe, and who it really means

lhe is the textbook indirect pronoun for to him, to her and to you. In much of Brazil it has drifted largely to the last of those: it is a polite you, used with você or o senhor:

Eu lhe agradeço. - I thank you.

For to him and to her, Brazilians use para plus the subject pronoun:

Eu disse para ele. - I told him.

Which leaves the everyday system looking like this: me, te and nos before the verb for the people in the conversation, and ele, ela, para ele or nothing at all for everyone else.

Te with você

Strictly, te belongs to tu, and você ought to take o, a or lhe. In practice, nearly every Brazilian uses te as the object form of você, even in the same sentence:

Você sabe que eu te amo. - You know I love you.

Purists call this mixing. Brazil calls it Portuguese. If you have learned how tu and você split between Brazil and Portugal, this is where that split reaches the pronouns.

After a preposition, the pronoun changes

After a preposition, the object pronouns give way to a different set, and this is one place Brazilian speech follows the book closely:

com fuses with the pronoun into one word for me, tu and us: comigo, contigo, conosco. Deixa comigo - leave it to me - is worth learning whole. And note para mim, never para eu, when me is the object: Isso é para mim, this is for me.

Where the textbook rule still matters

You will meet the hyphenated forms constantly in writing, and in everything from Portugal, so they are worth being able to read.

After an infinitive ending in -r, o and a become lo and la, the -r drops, and an a or e left at the end takes an accent: ver + o gives vê-lo, comprar + o gives comprá-lo, fazer + o gives fazê-lo. An -ir verb needs no accent: partir + o gives parti-lo. Eu vou vê-lo amanhã is correct, careful Portuguese; in speech a Brazilian says Eu vou ver ele amanhã.

European Portuguese also fuses two pronouns into one word (mo, lho) and, in very formal writing, puts a pronoun in the middle of a future verb: dar-lhe-ei, I will give him. That last one is a museum piece in Brazil. Recognise it if you meet it in a novel; never say it.

Even the European rule has exceptions, and they explain why some sentences are identical on both sides of the Atlantic. Certain words pull the pronoun in front of the verb in Portugal too: negatives like não, nunca and ninguém, adverbs like já, and question words. So Não te conheço, Eu nunca te esqueço, Ninguém me ouve and Eu já te disse are correct everywhere Portuguese is spoken. Brazil simply took that front position and made it the default for every sentence, which is why the Brazilian system is, in the end, the easier one to learn.

Mistakes English speakers make

Putting the pronoun after the verb. English says I love you with the pronoun after the verb, and learners copy that into Amo-te or Eu amo te. In Brazil it goes in front: Eu te amo.

Putting it after both verbs. Vou ligar te is the English order again. With two verbs, it goes between them: Vou te ligar.

Using lhe for him or her. Correct on paper, but in conversation a Brazilian may well hear it as you. For him or her, use para ele, para ela.

Confusing o the pronoun with o the article. When o comes straight before a verb, it is him or it, not the. Eu o vi is I saw him.

Para eu instead of para mim. After a preposition, me is mim: Isso é para mim. The one exception is when the pronoun is the subject of a following infinitive, where eu is correct: para eu fazer, for me to do. The rough test: if a verb follows and the pronoun is doing it, eu; if the sentence stops, mim. (In é difícil para mim entender, para mim belongs to difícil, it is difficult for me, so mim is right there.)

What to do next

Start with me, te and nos before the verb, and the two-verb pattern Vou te ligar, Posso te ajudar?. Those alone cover most of what you will say about yourself and the person in front of you. Leave o, a and the hyphens for reading.

The same small pronouns do a second job in Portuguese reflexive verbs, the other half of this chapter, where me chamo turns out to be the same me doing the same thing to yourself. Then keep going with the Portuguese course, and look at the word pages for lhe and conosco to see the pronouns in real sentences.