Vocês: Universal 2pl

When you want to address more than one person in Brazilian Portuguese, you have exactly one choice: vocês. There is no formal-versus-informal split in the plural, no separate intimate form, and no decision to agonize over. This is one of the genuinely easy corners of Portuguese grammar — and it is worth understanding why it ended up this way.

One pronoun for every "you all"

English speakers reach for clumsy workarounds — "you guys," "you all," "y'all," "the both of you" — because standard English has no dedicated plural "you." Brazilian Portuguese has the opposite situation: it has a single, clean word that covers all of them. Whether you are talking to your two best friends, a room full of strangers, your grandparents, or the board of directors, you say vocês.

That last example matters: even in a formal context where you might address each individual as o senhor (the singular formal form), the plural collapses back to vocês. Brazilian Portuguese simply does not maintain a politeness distinction in the second-person plural.

What happened to "vós"?

Older grammars and Spanish learners often expect a "true" second-person plural pronoun. Portuguese once had vós, parallel to Spanish vosotros. In Brazil today, vós is effectively dead. You will encounter it in three places only, and all of them should be labeled clearly in your mind:

• In the Bible and church liturgy (literary / archaic): "Vós sois a luz do mundo." (You are the light of the world.)
• In old literature and 19th-century speeches (archaic).
• In a few rural pockets and traditional sermons (regional / archaic).

No Brazilian uses vós in ordinary conversation, email, or modern writing. Treat it as a museum piece. This is one place where Brazilian Portuguese is simpler than European Portuguese, which still keeps vós alive in certain northern dialects and registers.

Vocês takes third-person plural verbs

Here is the one thing that genuinely trips learners up. Although vocês means "you (plural)," it triggers the third-person plural verb form — the same form you use for eles (they). It does not take a special "second-person" ending.

The reason is historical: você descends from the old honorific Vossa Mercê ("Your Mercy"), which was grammatically third person — you spoke about the honored person rather than to them, just as English once used "Your Majesty is" rather than "you are." That third-person agreement survived even as você(s) became an ordinary everyday pronoun. So the meaning shifted to second person, but the grammar stayed third person.

Possessives: "de vocês" is the safe choice

Saying "your" (plural) is where Brazilian Portuguese reveals a small fault line. There are two options:

1. de vocês — the unambiguous, everyday spoken choice. It literally means "of you all" and can never be misread.
2. seu / sua / seus / suas — grammatically correct, but ambiguous, because the same word also means "his," "her," "their," and singular formal "your."

Because seu is so overloaded, Brazilians overwhelmingly prefer de vocês in speech when they need to be understood. For a full treatment of why seu is a minefield, see the page on the seu ambiguity problem.

Vocês as an object

When "you all" is the object of a verb or a preposition rather than the subject, you have a few forms:

• vocês itself, as the object of a preposition: "Eu falei com vocês ontem" (I spoke with you all yesterday). This is the normal spoken pattern.
• os / as as a formal direct object clitic (formal / written): "Eu os vi na festa" (I saw you all at the party). Rare in casual speech.
• lhes as a formal indirect object clitic (formal / written): "Eu lhes disse a verdade" (I told you all the truth). Likewise formal.

In real spoken Brazilian Portuguese, the direct object is most often just vocês placed after the verb, rather than the formal os/as clitics. So "Eu vi vocês" (I saw you all) is far more natural than the bookish "Eu os vi."

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Vocês is the only second-person plural pronoun in everyday Brazilian Portuguese. There is no formal/informal split in the plural.
• It triggers third-person plural verb endings (vocês falam, vocês são) because of its honorific origin in Vossa Mercê.
• Vós is archaic — biblical, literary, or regional. Recognize it; never produce it.
• For plural "your," prefer the unambiguous de vocês over the overloaded seu/sua.
• As an object, spoken Portuguese keeps vocês after the verb (Eu vi vocês); the clitics os/as/lhes belong to formal writing.