Indirect Questions

There is a polite way and a blunt way to ask for almost anything, and in Brazilian Portuguese the difference often comes down to a single move: instead of firing off the question directly, you wrap it inside another sentence. Que horas são? ("What time is it?") is perfectly fine, but Você sabe que horas são? ("Do you know what time it is?") is softer, friendlier, and the default when speaking to someone you don't know. This wrapping is the indirect question, and it's one of the most important politeness devices in everyday Brazilian speech.

This page shows you how to build indirect questions, why they soften the request, and the one structural rule that learners most often get wrong: inside an indirect question, you use statement word order.

The core idea: embed the question under another verb

A direct question asks for information head-on. An indirect (or embedded) question takes that same question and makes it the object of a verb like saber (to know), poder dizer / dizer (to be able to say / to say), or a phrase like queria saber (I'd like to know). The original question becomes a subordinate clause.

Why does this soften things? Because grammatically you're no longer demanding the information — you're politely inquiring whether the other person is able or willing to provide it. You give them an exit. This is exactly the same logic as English "Do you know where...?" versus the bare "Where is...?". The instinct transfers; only the Portuguese forms are new.

The crucial rule: statement word order inside

Here is the rule that catches nearly every learner. In a direct question, Brazilian Portuguese often shifts word order — the verb may come before the subject, and the question word leads. But the moment that question becomes embedded, it switches to plain statement order: question word, then subject, then verb.

In practice, with short subjects, both orders are heard in casual Brazilian speech (Você sabe onde fica o banheiro? is extremely common, with the verb still before the subject because banheiro is a heavy subject that likes to sit at the end). But the safe, always-correct pattern — and the one that matters in writing — is question word + subject + verb.

English speakers find this comfortable because English does the same thing: you say "I don't know why he didn't come," never "I don't know why didn't he come." The trap is that learners over-apply the do-support and inversion habits of English direct questions. There's no equivalent of "do" in Portuguese, so the temptation is smaller, but the inversion habit can still leak in.

Yes/no indirect questions use "se"

When the embedded question is a yes/no question (one with no question word), you join it with se — "whether / if."

This se is the same word as the conditional "if," but here it means "whether." Brazilian Portuguese, unlike formal English, makes no distinction between "if" and "whether" — se covers both. Don't reach for any other word.

The politeness toolkit

These are the standard openers, ranked roughly from neutral to very polite. Notice how the more polite ones pile on softeners — the imperfect/conditional of querer and poder, plus por favor.

Notice Você sabe me dizer...? — a very Brazilian double layer ("Do you know how to tell me...?"). It's idiomatic and extremely polite; a single fixed chunk worth learning whole.

Indirect questions in reported speech

Indirect questions also appear when you report what someone asked. Here the embedding verb is one of asking — perguntar (to ask), querer saber (to want to know).

This shades into the broader topic of reported speech, where tenses shift backward (queria, tinha saído). For the full system of how tenses change when you report a question, see the dedicated reported-speech pages cross-referenced below.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• An indirect question embeds the question under an outer verb (saber, poder dizer, queria saber); the wrapper carries the politeness.
• Inside, use statement word order: question word + subject + verb (no inversion, no "do").
• Yes/no questions are joined with se ("if / whether"); wh-questions use the question word itself as the connector.
• Você sabe me dizer...? is a hallmark Brazilian polite opener — learn it as a chunk.
• This mirrors English ("Do you know where...?") closely, so the politeness instinct transfers; just avoid leaking English question inversion into the embedded clause.