Portuguese Reflexive Verbs: me, se, nos and Where They Go

A reflexive verb is a verb whose action comes back to the person doing it. English has a few (I hurt myself, enjoy yourself) and generally avoids them. Portuguese uses them constantly: for getting up, sitting down, feeling, worrying, getting lost, getting married and telling someone your name. The mechanics are small. The dictionary writes the verb with -se on the end, levantar-se, and when you conjugate it a short pronoun goes with the verb and matches the subject.

Eu me levanto cedo. - I get up early.

Como você se chama? - What is your name? (literally, how do you call yourself?)

Two things make this topic worth a page of its own. The first is that Brazil and the textbook disagree about where the pronoun goes, and this course sides with Brazil. The second is that the se frequently changes what a verb means, so leaving it off is not a small slip but a different sentence.

The reflexive pronouns

There are only three words to learn for Brazilian Portuguese, and one of them does most of the work:

The verb itself is completely ordinary. levantar-se conjugates exactly like falar (the endings are in Portuguese verb conjugation), and the pronoun is the only new thing. Because você takes the third-person form, it also takes se, so Ele se chama and Você se chama differ only in the subject.

a gente deserves a line. It means we, takes the singular verb form, and takes se rather than nos. In everyday Brazilian speech a gente se levanta is far more common than nós nos levantamos, which is correct but sounds a little careful. The double nós nos is one reason people avoid it.

Portugal also uses tu with te (tu te chamas), and you will hear te in parts of Brazil too. It is real and not wrong, but a learner aiming at Brazilian Portuguese can leave it until later.

Where the pronoun goes: Brazil versus the book

This is the part most courses get backwards for a Brazilian learner. The traditional rule, and the everyday rule in Portugal, puts the pronoun after the verb with a hyphen:

Levanto-me cedo. - I get up early. (Portugal, or formal writing)

Brazilians almost never say that. In Brazilian speech the pronoun goes in front of the conjugated verb, every time:

Eu me levanto cedo. - I get up early. (Brazil)

Ela se sente sozinha. - She feels lonely.

The hyphenated order is not wrong, and you will see it in newspapers, contracts and older books. It is simply the written register, and using it in conversation in São Paulo sounds like reading a legal document aloud. The same Brazilian habit governs the object pronouns (me, te, o, a, lhe), which have their own guide.

A sentence can even open with the pronoun in Brazil: Me chamo Ana is how a great many Brazilians say it. Strict grammar still objects to starting a sentence with me, so in careful writing put the subject first: Eu me chamo Ana. Speak the first; write the second.

With a second verb

When a reflexive verb follows another verb in the infinitive, such as ir (going to), precisar (to need) or querer (to want), Brazilians put the pronoun between the two verbs, and it still matches the subject:

Vou me sentar aqui. - I am going to sit down here.

Preciso me levantar cedo amanhã. - I need to get up early tomorrow.

Eu vou me casar. - I am getting married.

The pronoun does not turn into se just because the verb after it is an infinitive. Vou se sentar is common in casual Brazilian speech, but it is nonstandard, and it is not a habit to copy. Keep the pronoun matched to whoever is doing the sitting.

Reflexive verbs in the past tense

This is the good news. Portuguese forms its everyday past with a single word, the pretérito perfeito, so there is no auxiliary to choose and no participle to agree. The pronoun stays where it was:

Eu me levantei tarde. - I got up late.

Ele se machucou. - He hurt himself.

Eles se casaram no ano passado. - They got married last year.

Anyone who has fought with French or Italian reflexives, where the past needs être or essere and an agreeing participle, can relax. In Portuguese the past of a reflexive verb is just the past of a verb with a pronoun in front of it.

Verbs that change meaning with se

This is the part to learn properly, because here the se is not decoration. With these verbs the plain form does something to someone or something else, and the reflexive form does something different:

A few pairs side by side show why this matters:

Ele chamou a polícia. - He called the police.

Ele se chama João. - His name is João.

A cidade mudou muito. - The city has changed a lot.

Nós nos mudamos para o Rio. - We moved to Rio.

Sinto muito. - I am very sorry.

Eu me sinto bem. - I feel good.

The last pair is the one that catches people. Sinto muito is a fixed apology, the standard way to say I am sorry, and it has no pronoun. Eu me sinto is about how you feel. Drop the me from I feel good and you have produced something closer to I sense well, which a Brazilian will understand and quietly notice.

tornar-se is also worth flagging, because it is one of the ways Portuguese says become: Ela se tornou médica is she became a doctor. In speech, ficar often does the same job with less ceremony.

Reflexive in Portuguese, not in English

Then there is the group where English sees nothing reflexive at all, and Portuguese still wants the pronoun. There is no logic to extract here; the se is part of the verb, and the fix is to learn it with the verb, the way you learn a noun with its article.

Se cuida! is a very common Brazilian goodbye, and it breaks the rule about not opening with a pronoun in exactly the way everyday speech always does. The textbook version is Cuide-se, which is fine on a card and slightly formal out loud. Commands have their own rules, covered in the Portuguese imperative.

Where Brazil drops the se

Here is the honest complication. Relaxed Brazilian Portuguese is steadily dropping the reflexive pronoun from a handful of very common verbs, and you will hear the short versions every day:

• Eu lembro de tudo. instead of Eu me lembro de tudo. - I remember everything.
• Esqueci o nome dele. instead of Eu me esqueci do nome dele. - I forgot his name.
• Senta aí. instead of Sente-se. - Sit down.
• Eles casaram. instead of Eles se casaram. - They got married.

And acordar, to wake up, is simply not reflexive in Brazil: Eu acordei tarde, I woke up late, with no pronoun and nothing missing.

None of this means the pronoun is optional in general. It is dropped from specific, frequent verbs in informal speech, and the full form is correct everywhere. Learn the version with the pronoun first, and you will never be wrong; let the shortened version arrive naturally from what you hear. The reverse order, learning the shortcuts first, leaves you unable to write a formal email.

Each other: the reciprocal use

In the plural, the same pronouns can mean each other rather than ourselves or themselves:

A gente se vê amanhã. - See you tomorrow. (literally, we see each other tomorrow)

Eles se amam. - They love each other.

Nós nos conhecemos na escola. - We met at school.

A gente se vê is one of the commonest ways to say goodbye in Brazil, and it is a reflexive pronoun doing reciprocal work in plain sight. Context always settles which reading is meant, because people rarely go around seeing themselves.

Mistakes English speakers make

1. Putting the pronoun after the verb in speech. Levanto-me is correct Portuguese, but it sounds bookish in Brazilian speech. Say Eu me levanto and save the hyphen for formal writing.
2. Leaving the pronoun off a verb that needs it. Eu chamo Ana means I am calling Ana, not my name is Ana. With the verbs in the meaning-change table, the se is the whole point.
3. Letting the pronoun drift to se before an infinitive. Eu vou me sentar, not vou se sentar. The pronoun always matches the subject.
4. Using si instead of se. si exists, but it is the form that follows a preposition (para si, for himself or herself). The reflexive pronoun next to a verb is always se.
5. Translating the English emphatic myself as a reflexive. I did it myself is not reflexive in Portuguese, because nothing is done to you. Say Eu mesmo fiz or Eu fiz sozinho.

What to do next

Learn the reflexive verbs as whole units, with the pronoun attached: not levantar but levantar-se, not chamar but chamar-se. Say them aloud in the Brazilian order, eu me levanto, ele se chama, a gente se vê, until the pronoun in front feels like part of the verb.

Then put them in the past, which in Portuguese costs you nothing extra: the preterite endings plus the pronoun you already know. Eu me levantei, ele se machucou, eles se casaram. The verbs themselves are all in the Portuguese course, which is where to drill them.