Relative Clause Syntax

A relative clause modifies a noun by attaching a whole clause to it: the book that I read, the city where I was born. Brazilian Portuguese has a full toolkit of relative words — que, quem, o qual, cujo, onde — and choosing among them is mostly mechanical once you know the rules. But there's a twist that no textbook of European Portuguese prepares you for: standard written BR and everyday spoken BR build relative clauses in genuinely different ways. The written language pied-pipes the preposition (a cidade *em que nasci); the spoken language drops or strands it and props the gap up with a pronoun (a cidade **que eu nasci*). Knowing both, and which register each belongs to, is the real skill here.

The all-purpose relative: que

Que is the default for almost everything — people or things, subject or direct object. It never inflects.

Notice that English lets you drop "that" in object clauses ("the book I bought"), and so does Portuguese conceptually — but Portuguese keeps que obligatory. You can never omit it: "o livro comprei ontem" is ungrammatical.

After a preposition with a human antecedent: quem

When the relative refers to a person and follows a preposition, standard BR uses quem.

This is where English speakers feel the structure flip. English happily strands the preposition at the end ("the man I spoke with"), and even drops the relative entirely. Standard Portuguese instead drags the preposition to the front, in front of quem: com quem, de quem, para quem.

The formal heavyweight: o qual / a qual

O qual (and a qual, os quais, as quais) agrees in gender and number with its antecedent. It's (formal) and shows up mainly in writing, where it does two jobs: it disambiguates que after a preposition, and it picks out a specific antecedent in a long sentence.

In speech, almost nobody says o qual; it would sound stiff or bureaucratic. Recognize it for reading, but don't reach for it when talking.

The possessive relative: cujo

Cujo means "whose / of which" and is unique because it agrees with the thing possessed, not the possessor. No article comes between cujo and its noun.

Cujos agrees with livros (masc. plural) and cuja with sede (fem. singular), regardless of the gender of the writer or company. Cujo is (formal)/(literary) — in speech Brazilians overwhelmingly paraphrase it with que + o/a dele/dela: "O escritor que eu mais admiro os livros dele." That's stigmatized in writing but extremely common when talking.

Place, time, manner: onde, em que, como

Onde relativizes a place; aonde if movement toward is involved; em que a time; como a manner. Note that for time, standard BR uses em que (o dia em que...), not quando — "o dia quando nos conhecemos" is a common anglicism that prescriptivists reject, though you'll hear it casually.

In (formal) writing, place is often relativized with em que rather than onde ("o bairro em que cresci"), and onde is reserved strictly for physical location — using onde for abstract "situations in which" ("uma reunião onde..." ) is criticized by prescriptivists, who prefer em que.

Restrictive vs non-restrictive: the comma changes the meaning

A restrictive clause narrows down which noun you mean and takes no comma. A non-restrictive clause adds extra, parenthetical information about an already-identified noun, and is set off by commas (just like English).

The first restricts to a subset; the second comments on the whole group. The comma is not optional decoration — it flips the meaning, exactly as in English.

The big register split: pied-piping vs resumptives and dropping

This is the heart of the page. Standard BR follows the European pattern of pied-piping — the preposition travels to the front with the relative word:

But everyday spoken BR overwhelmingly uses one of two non-standard strategies instead. The chopping strategy simply drops the preposition and relativizes with bare que:

The resumptive strategy keeps que and then fills the gap inside the clause with a normal pronoun (a "copy" of the antecedent):

Both are ubiquitous in natural speech and informal writing, and both are stigmatized in formal/written registers. The reason this happens is structural: BR has been moving away from preposition-fronting for a long time, and since it can't (in the standard) strand the preposition at the end the way English does, speakers solve the "where do I put the preposition?" problem either by deleting it or by pronouncing it on a resumptive pronoun. English speakers actually find the resumptive intuitive at first — but be aware it marks your speech as (informal).

Common Mistakes

English speakers transfer preposition-stranding directly. Standard BR fronts the preposition (com quem); spoken BR drops it (que falei) — but it never leaves com dangling.

The dropped-preposition version is fine in casual speech, but flag it as (informal): in any formal context use em que or onde.

Resumptives appear with prepositional gaps, not with simple subject/object que. Adding ele after a plain object que is an overcorrection.

Key Takeaways

• Que covers most cases; quem after a preposition for people; o qual is the (formal) disambiguator; cujo is the possessive that agrees with the thing owned; onde/quando/como for place/time/manner.
• The comma is meaningful: no comma = restrictive (narrows down), comma = non-restrictive (extra info).
• The defining feature of BR relatives is the register split: standard pied-piping (em que, com quem) versus spoken dropping (que eu nasci) and resumptives (que eu falei dele). Master both and deploy by register.