Você vs Tu: Decision Guide | Portuguese (Brazil) Grammar

Brazilian Portuguese gives you two words for informal "you (singular)": você and tu. Both mean the same thing — the everyday "you" you use with friends, family, and peers. The question every learner asks is: which one do I use? This page gives you a one-line answer and then explains exactly why it's the right one.

The one-line answer

Use você. Everywhere. Always.

Você is understood and accepted in every region of Brazil, by every speaker, in casual and neutral situations alike. It is the genuinely safe, neutral default. Tu is a regional option that only pays off if you are immersed in a tu-speaking area and you match the local verb agreement correctly — and getting that agreement wrong sounds worse than simply not using tu at all.

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A learner who uses only você sounds natural in every corner of Brazil. A learner who sprinkles in tu with the wrong verb form sounds odd everywhere. The downside of você is essentially zero; the downside of mishandled tu is real.

Why the two even exist

Historically, Portuguese had tu for the intimate "you" and a polite form of address, vossa mercê ("your mercy"), for respectful "you." Over centuries, vossa mercê eroded phonetically — vossa mercê → vosmecê → você — and in Brazil it drifted all the way down the politeness scale until it became the ordinary, neutral "you." As você spread, it pushed tu out of most of the country, but never completely. The result is today's split: a national, neutral você and a patchwork of regional tu.

Because você descends from a third-person address ("your mercy is..."), it still takes third-person singular verb forms — and this is the single most important grammatical fact about it.

The grammar: agreement is everything

The two pronouns differ not just in flavor but in the verb endings they trigger.

Você always takes the third-person singular verb — the same form as ele/ela ("he/she"). This never varies, anywhere.
Tu takes either the second-person singular (conservative: tu falas) or the third-person singular (colloquial: tu fala), depending on the region.

	você	tu (conservative)	tu (colloquial)
present "to speak"	você fala	tu falas	tu fala
present "to go"	você vai	tu vais	tu vai
present "to be (ser)"	você é	tu és	tu é
past "to see"	você viu	tu viste	tu viu
object pronoun	te (in practice)	te	te
possessive	seu / teu	teu	teu

Notice that você has exactly one column and one set of forms — that's what makes it so safe. Tu has two competing columns, and you must pick the one the locals use.

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The fastest way to a pronoun-agreement error is to put an -s on a você verb. Você fala, você é, você vai — never você falas. If you only remember one rule, remember that você uses the ele/ela form.

Você quer ir ao cinema hoje à noite?

Do you want to go to the movies tonight? (works anywhere in Brazil)

Você já almoçou ou ainda está com fome?

Have you had lunch already, or are you still hungry?

Tu vais sair mais cedo hoje?

Are you leaving earlier today? (conservative tu — South, parts of NE)

Tu viu o preço da gasolina, mano?

Did you see the price of gas, man? (colloquial Rio tu)

The object pronoun: both lean on te

Here's a convenient simplification. Whatever subject pronoun you choose, the everyday spoken object pronoun is te. Você-speakers say eu te ligo ("I'll call you") just as readily as tu-speakers do. So you don't have to coordinate your object pronoun with your subject pronoun in casual speech — te covers you either way.

Você me espera que eu já te encontro lá embaixo.

Wait for me — I'll meet you downstairs in a sec.

Eu te mando o endereço por mensagem, tá?

I'll send you the address by text, okay?

(In strict formal writing, a você subject technically calls for the object o/a and possessive seu/sua, but that is a written-register refinement, not how people speak.)

When is tu actually worth using?

Use tu only when both of these are true:

You are living in or speaking with people from a clearly tu-using region (Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, much of the Northeast and North); and
You have learned the local verb agreement and can apply it consistently.

If either condition fails, default to você. There is no situation in Brazil where você is incorrect or rude among peers, so you lose nothing by sticking with it while you learn.

Tu tá com fome? A gente pode pedir uma pizza.

Are you hungry? We could order a pizza. (colloquial tu, fits casual Rio speech)

Você está com fome? A gente pode pedir uma pizza.

Are you hungry? We could order a pizza. (the você version — works everywhere)

These two sentences mean exactly the same thing. The second one is the one you should reach for until you're confident about local tu usage.

How this compares to English

English speakers find this choice strange because English collapsed everything into one invariant "you" four centuries ago. The old "thou" (the historical cousin of tu) vanished from everyday English entirely. So an English speaker has no living intuition for "two informal you-words, one of which changes the verb." The mental model to build is: você is your reliable "you," and tu is an optional regional accent you can adopt later — like learning to say "y'all" naturally after living in the American South, rather than something you must master on day one.

Common Mistakes

❌ Tu vai gostar disso. (said by a learner in São Paulo)

Out of place — São Paulo doesn't use tu; say você vai gostar disso.

✅ Você vai gostar disso.

You're going to like this.

❌ Você vais ao mercado?

Incorrect — você never takes the -s (second-person) ending.

✅ Você vai ao mercado?

Are you going to the market?

❌ Tu falas inglês? (said in casual Rio)

Sounds bookish locally — cariocas say tu fala.

✅ Você fala inglês?

Do you speak English? (the safe choice anywhere)

❌ Eu chamei tu ontem.

Incorrect — tu is a subject; use the object form te.

✅ Eu te chamei ontem.

I called you yesterday.

❌ Tu é meu amigo, mas você não me ajudou.

Incorrect — don't flip between tu and você for the same person.

✅ Você é meu amigo, mas não me ajudou.

You're my friend, but you didn't help me.

The recurring theme: the only way to get tu wrong is to use it. Pin yourself to você, keep its third-person agreement consistent, and you will never make a pronoun-agreement mistake with informal "you" in Brazil.

Key takeaways

Default to você — neutral, national, always correct among peers.
Você always takes a third-person singular verb (você fala, você é, você vai).
Use tu only when immersed in a tu-region and matching its local agreement.
In speech, the object pronoun te works regardless of which subject pronoun you chose.

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