Portuguese Pronouns: A Complete Guide to Personal and Object Pronouns in Portuguese

Look, Portuguese pronouns are confusing. There's no getting around it.

You've got subject pronouns, object pronouns, reflexive pronouns, possessive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, relative pronouns — and half of them change depending on whether you're speaking Brazilian Portuguese or European Portuguese.

Most Portuguese courses throw all this at you in the first few weeks, expect you to memorize a bunch of tables, and then wonder why you freeze up every time you try to say something simple like "I gave it to her."

Here's the thing: you don't need to master Portuguese pronouns all at once. You need to understand how they actually work, learn the ones you'll use constantly, and pick up the rest naturally as you hear them in real content.

That's what this guide is for.

Portuguese personal pronouns: The basics

Let's start with subject pronouns — the words for "I," "you," "he," "she," etc. These are the pronouns you'll use most often when you're first learning Portuguese.

Now here's something that trips up English speakers: Portuguese verbs change their endings based on the subject. This means you can often drop the pronoun entirely because the verb tells you who's doing the action.

When a Brazilian says "Vou ao mercado" instead of "Eu vou ao mercado," the verb form "vou" already tells you it's first person singular. The pronoun isn't wrong — it's just optional.

This is actually great news. It means you can focus on verb conjugation patterns and let the pronouns fade into the background until they feel natural.

The tu vs. você situation

This is where things get interesting (and where a lot of learners get confused).

Both tu and você mean "you" in the singular. But they work differently depending on where you are and who you're talking to.

In Brazil: Você is the default for most situations. It's informal, casual, and what you'll hear in the vast majority of Brazilian content. Tu exists in some regions (especially the South and Northeast), but here's the kicker — Brazilians often use tu with você conjugations. So you'll hear "tu vai" instead of the technically correct "tu vais." This is common in spoken Brazilian Portuguese and totally normal.

In Portugal: Tu is informal, used with friends and family. Você is trickier — some Portuguese speakers see it as slightly formal, others as slightly rude (like pointing at someone). The safest formal option is using third-person constructions like "o senhor" or "a senhora."

My recommendation: If you're learning Brazilian Portuguese, just use você. It's simpler, it uses the same conjugation as ele/ela (third person), and everyone will understand you. If you're targeting European Portuguese, get comfortable with tu and its conjugations.

A gente: The informal "we"

In Brazilian Portuguese, you'll constantly hear "a gente" instead of "nós" for "we." Literally it means "the people," but functionally it just means "we" — and it takes third-person singular conjugation.

"A gente vai ao cinema" = We're going to the movies

This is one of those things that textbooks mention but don't emphasize enough. In real Brazilian conversation, "a gente" is everywhere. If you're learning Portuguese from Netflix shows or Brazilian content (which you should be), you'll hear it constantly.

Direct and indirect object pronouns in Portuguese

Okay, this is where most learners start sweating. Object pronouns are the words that replace the thing or person receiving the action of a verb.

Direct object pronouns replace the direct object — the thing directly affected by the verb:

Indirect object pronouns replace the indirect object — usually the person who receives or benefits from the action:

Here are the forms:

Direct object pronouns:

Indirect object pronouns:

Where do these pronouns go?

This is the part that drives learners crazy, because it's completely different in Brazilian vs. European Portuguese.

In Brazilian Portuguese: Object pronouns usually come before the verb. "Eu te amo" (I love you). This is called proclisis, and it's the default in spoken Brazilian Portuguese.

In European Portuguese: Object pronouns usually come after the verb, connected by a hyphen. "Eu amo-te" (I love you). This is called enclisis.

There are rules about when the pronoun must come before the verb (after negative words, question words, certain conjunctions), but honestly? The best way to internalize this is exposure. You'll hear these patterns hundreds of times in real Portuguese content, and eventually the "wrong" placement will just sound wrong to your ear.

Here's a secret most teachers won't tell you: in casual Brazilian Portuguese, people often just use the subject pronoun as the object. Instead of "Eu o vi" (formal) or "Eu vi ele" (technically incorrect but common), you'll hear "Eu vi ele" all the time. It's grammatically imperfect but totally normal in everyday Brazilian speech.

Spelling changes with third-person direct objects

Portuguese throws another curveball at you here. When you attach o, a, os, or as to certain verb forms, they change spelling:

After verbs ending in -r, -s, -z → lo, la, los, las

After verbs ending in nasal sounds (-am, -em, -ão) → no, na, nos, nas

Look, I'm not going to lie — this is fiddly stuff that takes time to master. But you don't need to produce these perfectly right away. The goal is to recognize them when you see them in real content, understand what they mean, and gradually incorporate them into your own usage.

Portuguese possessive pronouns

Possessive pronouns show ownership: my, your, his, her, our, their.

Here's the key difference from English: Portuguese possessive pronouns agree with the thing being possessed, not the person who owns it.

If you're a guy and you're talking about "my house" (casa is feminine), you say "minha casa" — the possessive is feminine because casa is feminine, not because you're male.

The seu/sua ambiguity problem

Notice that seu/sua can mean "your," "his," "her," or "their" depending on context. This creates ambiguity.

If you say "O seu carro é preto," it could mean "Your car is black," "His car is black," or "Her car is black."

Portuguese solves this with dele/dela/deles/delas (of him/of her/of them), which come after the noun:

In real conversation, context usually makes the meaning clear. But when it doesn't, Portuguese speakers switch to the dele/dela construction.

Articles before possessives

In European Portuguese, you'll usually hear a definite article before the possessive: "O meu carro" (literally "the my car"). In Brazilian Portuguese, this article is often dropped: "Meu carro."

Neither is wrong — they're just regional differences.

Reflexive pronouns in Portuguese

Reflexive pronouns show that the subject and object of a verb are the same person — the action reflects back on whoever does it.

Portuguese uses reflexive verbs way more than English does. Actions that English treats as standalone verbs often require reflexives in Portuguese:

Some verbs are always reflexive in Portuguese: arrepender-se (to regret), lembrar-se (to remember), queixar-se (to complain).

The tricky part is that some verbs have different meanings depending on whether they're reflexive or not:

Demonstrative pronouns: This, that, and the other thing

Portuguese has a three-way system for demonstratives, compared to English's two-way system (this/that):

Close to the speaker: este, esta, isto (this) Close to the listener: esse, essa, isso (that, near you) Far from both: aquele, aquela, aquilo (that, over there)

Variable forms (este, esta, esse, essa, aquele, aquela) change based on the gender and number of the noun they describe. Invariable forms (isto, isso, aquilo) stay the same regardless — you use them when you don't know what the thing is or when speaking abstractly.

"O que é isso?" = What is that (near you)? "Isto é meu" = This (near me) is mine "Aquilo ali" = That thing over there

Brazilian Portuguese simplification: In everyday Brazilian speech, people mostly just use esse/essa/isso for both "this" and "that," combining it with aqui (here) or aí/lá (there) for clarity. "Isso aqui" = this thing here. "Isso aí" = that thing there.

This is way more practical than memorizing when to use este vs. esse. Listen to how native speakers actually use these in conversation and follow their lead.

Relative pronouns: Connecting ideas

Relative pronouns connect clauses and help you build more complex sentences: who, which, that, whose, where.

Que is the workhorse. It can refer to people or things and works in most situations:

Quem is for people only, and always follows a preposition:

Onde means "where":

Cujo/cuja means "whose" and agrees with the thing possessed, not the owner:

Here's an important difference from English: Portuguese never omits relative pronouns. In English you can say "The book I read" (dropping "that"). In Portuguese, you must say "O livro que eu li."

The real problem with learning Portuguese pronouns

Here's what nobody tells you: memorizing pronoun tables doesn't make you good at using pronouns.

You can study charts all day and still freeze up when someone asks you a simple question. That's because pronouns are automatic for native speakers — they don't think about which form to use, they just know from thousands of hours of hearing and using the language.

The solution isn't more grammar drills. It's more exposure to real Portuguese.

When you watch Brazilian shows, read Portuguese content, or listen to podcasts, you encounter pronouns in context over and over. You start to feel when "lhe" sounds right versus "para ele." You stop translating from English and start thinking in Portuguese patterns.

This is especially true for tricky stuff like clitic placement (where object pronouns go) and reflexive verbs. No amount of rule memorization will make these automatic. Immersion will.

If you're wondering whether Portuguese is hard to learn, the honest answer is: pronouns are one of the harder parts. But they become manageable when you approach them through real content rather than abstract grammar rules.

Putting it into practice

If you've made it this far, you now have a solid overview of how pronouns work in Portuguese. But reading about pronouns and actually using them are different things.

Here's my recommendation: don't try to master all of this at once. Start with the pronouns you need most:

Get comfortable with these through exposure to real content. Then gradually add the others as you notice them in what you're watching or reading.

The best way to actually learn Portuguese pronouns is to hear them used naturally, hundreds of times, in context. That's where tools like Migaku come in — you can learn Portuguese from real content like Netflix shows, YouTube videos, and articles, with instant lookups when you encounter a pronoun you don't recognize. Every time you see "lhe" or "nos" or "aquilo" in a real sentence, you can grab the meaning instantly, add it to your review system, and keep watching.

This is how pronouns become automatic. Not through memorization, but through massive exposure with comprehension support.

If you want to put these Portuguese grammar concepts into actual practice with content you enjoy, give Migaku a try. The browser extension lets you look up any word or form instantly while you're immersed in real Portuguese, and the built-in spaced repetition makes sure you actually remember what you learn. There's a 10-day free trial — plenty of time to see how learning from real content compares to grinding through grammar tables.

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