A1 (Beginner)Lesson 2: Personal Pronouns & Basic Prepositions
Brazilian Portuguese uses different ways to say "you" depending on region, distance, and formality. The most common form nationwide is você.
"você" = most common singular "you"
"tu" = regional, informal
"o senhor/a senhora" = respectful
All of these usually take third-person verbs in Brazil except traditional "tu falas" areas
você / tu / o senhor / a senhora + verb
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Brazilian Portuguese has more than one way to say "you", and the choice signals how close, casual or respectful the relationship is. The most common form nationwide is você.
Address forms set the tone of a conversation from the very first line. Picking the wrong one rarely breaks communication, but it can make the exchange feel oddly distant or oddly familiar.
você / vocês / o senhor / a senhora + third-person verb
tu + second-person verb (traditional) — or third-person verb (most common Brazilian usage)
| Step | Rule |
|---|---|
| Rule 1 | "Você" is the everyday singular "you" across most of Brazil and takes third-person verbs: você fala, você é. |
| Rule 2 | "Tu" is regional. Strict grammar gives tu falas; in most areas where tu is alive, people pair it with third-person verbs (tu fala). |
| Rule 3 | "O senhor" / "a senhora" are respectful forms for strangers, customers, elders and bosses. They also take third-person verbs. |
| Portuguese | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Você é brasileiro? | Are you Brazilian? |
| Você mora aqui? | Do you live here? |
| Vocês são amigos? | Are you (plural) friends? |
| O senhor é o Paulo? | Are you Paulo, sir? |
| A senhora é a professora? | Are you the teacher, ma'am? |
| O senhor mora no Rio? | Do you live in Rio, sir? |
| A senhora é de São Paulo? | Are you from São Paulo, ma'am? |
| Tu fala português? | Do you speak Portuguese? (Brazilian colloquial: tu + 3rd-person verb) |
| Tu falas inglês? | Do you speak English? (traditional 2nd-person agreement) |
Don't bounce between você and o senhor / a senhora in the same conversation — it sounds inconsistent.
Tu falas, tu és and other second-person forms are correct on paper but rare outside parts of the Northeast and the South in everyday speech.
With strangers, customers, or anyone older than you, o senhor / a senhora is almost always the safer choice.
Você is itself a contraction of medieval Vossa Mercê, but the reduction kept going: in modern spoken Brazilian Portuguese, você frequently shortens further to cê in subject position ("Cê tá bom?" instead of "Você está bem?"). Sociolinguistic studies treat this as the next stage of grammaticalization, with cê behaving more like a clitic than a full pronoun.
Sources: Zilles (2005), "The development of a new pronoun" — summary, Simon Fraser University, Wiktionary — cê.
In Rio Grande do Sul and parts of Santa Catarina, tu is the everyday pronoun, but speakers almost always pair it with the third-person verb form (tu fala, tu é) instead of the textbook second-person form (tu falas, tu és). Traditional second-person agreement still survives more strongly in parts of the Northeast (Maranhão, Piauí, Pernambuco), making "you-verb agreement" one of the clearest dialect markers in Brazilian Portuguese.
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