To use any reflexive verb you need its pronoun, and you need to put it in the right place. Both of those are simpler in Brazilian Portuguese than the textbooks make them look — but only if you learn the Brazilian facts rather than the European ones. There are five forms, one of them does most of the work, and in everyday Brazilian speech almost all of them sit before the verb. Get those three points and you can handle reflexives in conversation.
The forms
Each subject pronoun has a matching reflexive pronoun.
| Subject | Reflexive pronoun | Example |
|---|---|---|
| eu | me | Eu me lavo. |
| tu (regional) | te | Tu te lavas. |
| você / ele / ela | se | Ela se lava. |
| a gente | se | A gente se lava. |
| nós | nos | Nós nos lavamos. |
| vocês / eles / elas | se | Eles se lavam. |
Eu me visto e já desço.
I'll get dressed and come right down.
Nós nos vimos no shopping ontem.
We saw each other at the mall yesterday.
"se" does most of the work
The headline fact is how much se covers. A single form — se — serves você, ele, ela, vocês, eles, elas, and a gente. In Brazilian Portuguese, where você has almost entirely replaced tu and a gente very often replaces nós, this means se is the reflexive pronoun you reach for the overwhelming majority of the time.
Você se lembra do nome dela?
Do you remember her name?
Eles se entendem muito bem.
They get along really well.
Vocês se conheceram onde?
Where did you (all) meet (each other)?
This is a relief compared to the chart's appearance: in practice your day-to-day reflexive life runs on me (for eu) and se (for almost everything else), with nos appearing only when you actually use nós.
The "a gente" case is the one to watch
A gente means "we," but it is grammatically third-person singular — it agrees like ele/ela. So its reflexive pronoun is se, not nos, and its verb is the third-singular form.
A gente se levanta cedo nos dias de semana.
We get up early on weekdays.
A gente se diverte muito junto.
We have a lot of fun together.
This trips up English speakers and even Spanish speakers, who expect a "we" subject to take a "we" pronoun. A gente se levanta is correct; a gente nos levantamos mixes a singular subject with a plural pronoun and verb and is wrong.
te belongs to tu — and tu is regional
The pronoun te goes with tu, the informal "you" singular. In most of Brazil tu is not the everyday word for "you" — você is — so te as a reflexive is regionally limited (it is alive in the South, parts of the North/Northeast, and in some city dialects). One quirk worth flagging: many Brazilians who say você still slip into te for the object pronoun (Eu te amo, eu te ligo depois), mixing você as subject with te as object. That mix is extremely common and widely accepted in speech, even though it is "inconsistent" by the textbook.
Placement: Brazilian speech is proclitic
Now the part that genuinely separates Brazilian from European Portuguese. In Brazilian Portuguese the reflexive pronoun almost always comes before the verb (proclisis). This is the default even at the start of a sentence — a position where European Portuguese would attach the pronoun after the verb with a hyphen.
Me lembro como se fosse ontem.
I remember it like it was yesterday. (natural spoken BR)
Se acalma, não é nada demais.
Calm down, it's no big deal. (spoken BR)
A gente se conhece desde a escola.
We've known each other since school.
The post-verbal, hyphenated form — lava-se, conhece-se, lembro-me — is the European default, and in Brazil it survives only in formal writing and a few fixed expressions. To a Brazilian ear, lembro-me in conversation sounds like a newscaster or a lawyer talking; nobody says it at a bar.
| Form | Register in Brazil |
|---|---|
| Me lembro / se levanta / se acalma | everyday speech (informal) — the norm |
| Eu me lembro / ela se levanta | neutral, with subject expressed |
| Lembro-me / levanta-se / acalma-se | formal writing (formal/literary) |
Notice the second row: when there is an explicit subject (Eu me lembro), the pronoun still sits before the verb. So whether or not you state the subject, the Brazilian instinct is the same — pronoun first.
There is one place Brazilians do put the pronoun after the verb in speech: attached to an infinitive or gerund in some constructions (Vou levantar-me / vou me levantar both occur, with vou me levantar more colloquial). But you will never go wrong in spoken Brazilian by defaulting to proclisis.
Common Mistakes
❌ A gente nos levantamos cedo.
Incorrect — a gente is 3sg and takes se, not nos.
✅ A gente se levanta cedo.
We get up early.
❌ Lembro-me de você. (in casual conversation)
Grammatical but sounds formal/European in everyday speech.
✅ Me lembro de você. / Eu me lembro de você.
I remember you.
❌ Eles nos conhecem há anos. (meaning 'they've known each other')
Wrong pronoun — nos here means 'us', not the reciprocal.
✅ Eles se conhecem há anos.
They've known each other for years.
❌ Você te lembra do show?
Mismatched — você takes se, not te.
✅ Você se lembra do show?
Do you remember the concert?
❌ Eu se machuquei jogando bola.
Incorrect — eu takes me, not se.
✅ Eu me machuquei jogando bola.
I hurt myself playing soccer.
Key Takeaways
- The forms are me (eu), te (tu, regional), se (você/ele/ela/vocês/eles/elas/a gente), nos (nós).
- se does most of the work because você and a gente dominate Brazilian speech.
- a gente is 3rd-singular: it takes se and an ele-style verb, never nos.
- In spoken Brazilian, the reflexive pronoun is proclitic — it comes before the verb, even sentence-initially. The hyphenated lava-se is formal writing.
Now practice Portuguese
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Start learning Portuguese→Related Topics
- Reflexive Verbs: OverviewA2 — An introduction to Portuguese reflexive (pronominal) verbs — true reflexives, reciprocals, and lexicalized se-verbs — plus the BR drift toward dropping the pronoun.
- True Reflexive Verbs (Self-Directed Action)A2 — Reflexive verbs where the subject acts on itself — grooming and body-care verbs — plus the BR habit of dropping the pronoun and using the article with body parts.
- Proclisis as BR Default (Speech)A2 — In spoken Brazilian Portuguese the object pronoun goes before the verb almost every time — even at the start of a sentence.
- Clitic Placement: OverviewB1 — The three positions for clitic pronouns — proclisis, enclisis, mesoclisis — and why Brazilian speech and the prescriptive rulebook pull in opposite directions.
- 'A Gente' as Colloquial 'Nós'A1 — How a gente became the everyday word for we in Brazil — and why it takes a singular verb.
- Reflexive Pronouns: me, te, se, nos, seA2 — The Brazilian reflexive pronoun set and its three jobs — true reflexive, reciprocal, and pronominal — with special attention to the overloaded 'se'.