Mesoclise: Effectively Extinct in BR

Brazilian Portuguese has three theoretical positions for an object pronoun (clitic): before the verb (proclisis), after the verb (enclisis), and — astonishingly — inside the verb. That third option is mesoclisis (mesóclise), and it is the strangest construction in the whole Portuguese clitic system. This page exists not to teach you to use it, but to teach you to recognize it and to understand exactly why no Brazilian alive uses it in speech. If you ever produce amar-te-ei in conversation, you will sound like a 19th-century notary reading a will aloud.

What mesoclisis actually is

Mesoclisis splits a verb in two and drops the clitic into the seam. It only ever happens with the synthetic future (futuro do presente: amarei, darei, farei) and the conditional (futuro do pretérito: amaria, daria, faria). These two tenses are special because they are historically fused: amarei comes from amar + hei ("I have to love"), and amaria from amar + havia. The clitic wedges itself back into that ancient seam, between the infinitive stem and the ending.

Notice that with irregular futures like fazer (→ farei) and dizer (→ direi), the stem that survives is the irregular future stem (far-, dir-), not the full infinitive. The future/conditional ending then attaches after the clitic, carrying its own accent: far-se-*á*, *dir-se-ia*.

Why the clitic goes inside

The logic is the same proclisis-versus-enclisis logic that governs the rest of the clitic system — it has just been frozen in place. The historical rule was: a clitic may not begin a sentence, so in Amar-te-ei the pronoun cannot sit in front of amarei. But the synthetic future and conditional also resisted having the clitic dangle at the very end (amarei-te was never standard). The compromise inherited from medieval Portuguese was to tuck the pronoun into the verb's internal seam, where it is neither sentence-initial nor stranded at the end.

This means mesoclisis only appears when nothing in the sentence would otherwise pull the clitic forward. If a trigger for proclisis is present (a negative word, a question word, certain conjunctions or adverbs), even European Portuguese abandons mesoclisis and uses proclisis instead:

Why it is dead in Brazil

Brazil solved the whole problem differently, and earlier. Two changes wiped mesoclisis out of the living language:

1. The synthetic future itself retreated from speech. Brazilians rarely say amarei or darei at all. Spoken Brazilian Portuguese overwhelmingly uses the periphrastic future — ir + infinitive: vou amar, vou dar, vai fazer. You cannot perform mesoclisis on a periphrastic future, because there is no fused verb to split. The clitic simply goes in front of the main verb: vou te amar, vou te dar.

2. Brazil defaults to proclisis everywhere. Even in the rare cases a Brazilian uses the synthetic future or conditional in writing, the clitic goes in front of it, not inside it: te amarei, te daria. This violates the old prescriptive ban on sentence-initial clitics — but Brazil abandoned that ban in practice generations ago (see Proclisis: The Brazilian Default).

Where the fossil survives

Mesoclisis is not gone from Brazilian writing — it is confined to four narrow, high-register niches. Recognizing the niche tells you instantly what kind of text you are reading.

• (formal) / legal and notarial language — Statutes, contracts, court rulings, and official decrees preserve it as a marker of solemn authority: Far-se-á, proceder-se-á, observar-se-ão as disposições seguintes.
• (archaic) / ecclesiastical and biblical translation — Older Bible translations and liturgical texts retain it: Dar-vos-ei descanso ("I will give you rest").
• (literary) — Authors reach for it deliberately to evoke a formal, archaic, or ironic tone. In contemporary prose it almost always carries a faint whiff of the antiquated, used on purpose.
• Parody and rhetorical flourish — Comedians, columnists, and orators deploy it precisely because it sounds pompous, mocking bureaucratic or pretentious speech.

How English handles the same meanings

English has nothing remotely like mesoclisis — no language puts a pronoun inside a verb the way Portuguese does in amar-te-ei. The closest English comes to the register of mesoclisis is the legal-archaic future with "shall": Justice shall be done, The lessee shall vacate the premises. So when you meet far-se-á justiça, the right English instinct is not "it will do itself justice" but the lawyerly "justice shall be done." That "shall" register is your reliable signpost: mesoclisis in Portuguese maps onto solemn "shall"-future in English, and both are reserved for the same kinds of texts.

BR vs. PT-PT: the sharpest contrast

This is where Brazil and Portugal diverge most dramatically. In European Portuguese, mesoclisis is still living formal speech — a Portuguese newsreader or a careful speaker will genuinely say chamar-te-ei or dar-lhe-ei uma resposta in formal contexts. In Brazil it is purely a written fossil. This single feature is one of the cleanest dividing lines between the two varieties.

Common Mistakes

Because mesoclisis appears in textbooks, advanced learners sometimes "learn" it and then deploy it disastrously. These are the real errors.

A separate, subtler error is mis-splitting irregular verbs. Learners who do attempt mesoclisis in formal writing often write fazer-se-á instead of the correct far-se-á, forgetting that the irregular future stem (far-, dir-, trar-) is what survives. If you are not writing a statute, you will never need to get this right — which is the whole point of this page.

Key Takeaways

• Mesoclisis embeds the clitic inside the synthetic future or conditional: amar-te-ei, dar-lhe-ia, far-se-á.
• It appears only when no proclisis trigger (negation, question word) is present; a single não dissolves it.
• In Brazil it is recognition-only: a fossil of legal, biblical, literary, and parodic writing. Living Brazilian uses the periphrastic future plus proclisis (vou te amar) or proclisis on the synthetic form (te daria).
• In European Portuguese it remains living formal speech — making it one of the sharpest BR/PT-PT contrasts.
• Map it onto English "shall"-future when reading; never reproduce it when speaking.