This page outlines the use of object pronouns in Brazilian Portuguese. Object pronouns help to avoid unnecessary repetition of nouns, allowing language to flow more easily.
The object of a sentence is the noun that receives the action, for example, in the sentence, “Helen emailed Mark”, Mark is the recipient of the action and is therefore the object of the sentence. In contrast, the subject performs the action, so in this example, Helen is the subject of the sentence.
Instead of saying “Helen emailed Mark”, we might want to say “Helen emailed him”, in which case, we use the object pronoun ‘him’ in place of the proper noun ‘Mark’.
This page outlines use of both direct and indirect object pronouns in Brazilian Portuguese:
- The direct object pronoun directly receives the action e.g. instead of saying “I alerted Richard”, you say “I alerted him”
- The indirect object pronoun has something done ‘to it’ e.g. instead of saying “I gave the book to Richard”, you say “I gave the book to him”
Direct object pronouns
The table below lists direct object pronouns in Brazilian Portuguese:
| me | me |
| you | te |
| him, it | o |
| her, it | a |
| us | nos |
| them (masculine and mixed gender plural) | os |
| them (feminine plural) | as |
Examples of direct object pronouns in Brazilian Portuguese include:
| he called me | ele me ligou |
| I love you | eu te amo |
| we follow him | nós o seguimos |
| I helped her | eu a ajudei |
| I moved them | eu os mudei |
The direct object pronoun in Brazilian Portuguese usually appears before the verb.
In a negative sentence (e.g. if you want to say that something is not the case), the word não should go before the object pronoun e.g. eu não a vi = I did not see her
Direct object pronouns attached to conjugated verbs
When the direct object pronouns o, a, os and as are attached to conjugated verbs, the form changes to lo, la, los and las. The pronoun is placed after the verb and the following changes are made to infinitive verb endings:
| ar | á |
| er | ê |
| ir | i |
This is illustrated by the examples below:
| she had to put them in the bin | ela teve que colocá-los no lixo |
| she is going to read them | ela vai lê-los |
| I went to follow her | eu fui segui-la |
Indirect object pronouns
The table below lists indirect object pronouns in Brazilian Portuguese:
| to/for me | me |
| to/for you | te |
| to/for him, her, it | lhe |
| to/for us | nos |
| to/for them | lhes |
For example:
| you gave the money to me | você me deu o dinheiro |
Note: not all indirect object pronouns include the words ‘to’ or ‘for’, for example:
| he wrote you an email | ele te escreveu um e-mail |
In reality, Brazilians rarely use indirect object pronouns in everyday conversation and use ‘para’ instead, for example:
| I wrote the letter to him | eu escrevi a carta para ele |
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