Subject Pronouns with Verbs | Portuguese (Brazil) Grammar

Subject pronouns name who is doing the action of the verb: eu (I), você (you), ele (he), and so on. Brazilian Portuguese reshaped the traditional Romance pronoun set in two big ways — it threw out one pronoun entirely (vós), and it promoted a noun phrase (a gente, literally "the people") into an everyday word for "we." Getting this chart right is foundational, because the pronoun you choose determines which verb ending you use.

The Brazilian Portuguese subject pronouns

Person	Pronoun	English	Verb agreement
1st singular	eu	I	1st singular
2nd singular	tu (regional)	you	2nd singular (or 3rd, colloquially)
2nd singular (default)	você	you	3rd singular
3rd singular	ele / ela	he / she / it	3rd singular
1st plural (colloquial)	a gente	we	3rd singular
1st plural (formal/written)	nós	we	1st plural
2nd plural	vocês	you all	3rd plural
3rd plural	eles / elas	they	3rd plural

Eu moro em São Paulo, mas a minha família mora no interior.

I live in São Paulo, but my family lives in the countryside.

Você quer um cafezinho?

Do you want a little coffee?

Eles chegaram atrasados de novo.

They arrived late again.

Você is the default "you"

In Brazilian Portuguese, você is the standard, neutral way to say "you" to one person. It is neither especially formal nor especially intimate — you use it with friends, coworkers, shop clerks, and most strangers. Crucially, although você means "you," it takes third-person singular verb forms, exactly like ele/ela.

Você fala inglês? Eu preciso de ajuda com uma tradução.

Do you speak English? I need help with a translation.

This is a major departure from European Portuguese, where tu is the everyday "you" and você can sound distant or even cold. For most of Brazil, tu is the marked, regional choice and você is the unmarked default.

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For very formal address — speaking to an elderly person, a customer, an official — Brazilians often use o senhor (to a man) and a senhora (to a woman) instead of você. These also take third-person singular verbs: O senhor gostaria de mais alguma coisa? ("Would you like anything else, sir?").

Tu is regional

Tu has not disappeared from Brazil — it is alive in the Nordeste, in Rio de Janeiro, in the South (especially Rio Grande do Sul), and in parts of Santa Catarina and the Amazon. But it is regional, not national. And there is a famous wrinkle: in most places where tu is used colloquially, speakers pair it with third-person verb forms rather than the textbook second-person ones.

Tu vai sair hoje à noite?

Are you going out tonight? (colloquial Rio/Nordeste — note 'vai', not the textbook 'vais')

Tu viste o jogo ontem?

Did you see the game yesterday? (Rio Grande do Sul — here 'tu' keeps the 2nd-person 'viste')

The textbook tu vais, tu falas, tu comes is grammatically standard and survives in careful speech in Rio Grande do Sul, but across most of Brazil you will hear tu vai, tu fala, tu come. This regional behavior is covered fully on the tu (regional) page.

A gente — the everyday "we"

Here is the single most important thing for an English speaker to learn about Brazilian pronouns: in everyday speech, Brazilians say a gente far more often than nós to mean "we." Originally a noun phrase meaning "the people / the folk," a gente grammaticalized into a first-person plural pronoun — but it kept its grammatically singular shape, so it takes third-person singular verb forms.

A gente vai no cinema mais tarde, quer vir junto?

We're going to the movies later, want to come along?

A gente mora junto há três anos.

We've been living together for three years.

So "we go" is a gente vai (third-person singular) in casual speech and nós vamos (first-person plural) in more formal or written registers. Both are correct; they differ in register, not in meaning. The full contrast lives on the nós vs. a gente page, and the agreement consequences are detailed in subject-verb agreement.

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Do not let a gente fool you into a plural verb. "We're going" is a gente vai, never a gente vamos. The pronoun is plural in meaning but singular in grammar — match the verb to its form, not its meaning.

Vós is gone

Traditional Portuguese had vós as the second-person plural ("ye"). Brazilian Portuguese has dropped it entirely from both speech and ordinary writing — you will only encounter it in old religious texts, classical literature, and frozen liturgical phrases. The everyday plural "you all" is simply vocês, which takes third-person plural verbs.

Vocês já almoçaram ou esperam a gente?

Have you all had lunch already, or are you waiting for us?

Vós sois testemunhas.

Ye are witnesses. (archaic — biblical/liturgical only)

Why Brazilians keep pronouns more than other pro-drop languages

Portuguese is a pro-drop language: because the verb ending often identifies the subject, you can leave the pronoun out. Falo português is a complete sentence — the -o ending already tells you the subject is "I."

Falo português e um pouco de espanhol.

I speak Portuguese and a bit of Spanish. (pronoun dropped — the -o ending is unambiguous)

But Brazilian Portuguese relies on overt pronouns more than its cousins (Spanish, Italian) for two structural reasons:

Syncretism with você. Because você, ele, and ela all take the identical third-person singular verb, fala by itself could mean "you speak," "he speaks," or "she speaks." Without context, the verb ending does not disambiguate — so you keep the pronoun.
The a gente / ele collapse. Since a gente takes the same third-person singular verb as ele/ela, the sentence vai no cinema could mean "we're going to the movies" or "he/she is going to the movies." They sound identical. Brazilians resolve this only by keeping the pronoun overt: a gente vai vs. ele vai.

A gente chega às oito; ela chega só às nove.

We arrive at eight; she only arrives at nine. (both verbs are 'chega' — the pronouns carry all the information)

This is the deep insight: Brazilian Portuguese is technically pro-drop, but its specific pronoun system created so many ambiguous verb forms that speakers reintroduced pronouns to compensate. Spanish, with its more distinct endings, can drop pronouns far more freely than Brazilians do in practice.

Common mistakes

❌ A gente vamos sair agora.

Incorrect — 'a gente' takes a third-person singular verb, not first-person plural.

✅ A gente vai sair agora.

We're going to head out now.

❌ Vocês está prontos?

Incorrect — 'vocês' is plural and takes a third-person plural verb.

✅ Vocês estão prontos?

Are you all ready?

❌ Vós tendes razão.

Not wrong, but 'vós' is archaic in Brazil; use 'vocês' in real speech.

✅ Vocês têm razão.

You all are right.

❌ Você fala muito bem o inglês, ela também fala muito bem.

Ambiguous without pronouns; but the bigger transfer error is dropping the pronoun where 'fala' could mean você/ele/ela.

✅ Você fala inglês muito bem; ele também.

You speak English very well; he does too. (overt pronouns keep the subjects clear)

The errors above all trace back to two English-driven instincts: treating a gente as a plural "we" (because it means "we"), and under-using pronouns the way English does only with verbs that don't show person. In Brazilian Portuguese, match the verb to the pronoun's form, and keep the pronoun whenever dropping it would leave the subject ambiguous.

Key takeaways

The Brazilian set: eu, tu (regional), você, ele/ela, a gente, nós, vocês, eles/elas — vós is gone.
Você is the default "you" and takes third-person singular verbs; tu is regional and usually takes third-person verbs colloquially.
A gente means "we" but takes a third-person singular verb — a gente vai, never a gente vamos.
Brazilians keep subject pronouns overt more than other pro-drop languages, because você/ele/ela and a gente all share the same verb form.

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