Direct Object Pronouns (Me, Te, O, A, Nos, Vos, Os, As)

Direct object pronouns replace the thing or person that directly receives the action of a verb. In English: "I saw the book" → "I saw *it." In European Portuguese: "Vi o livro" → "Vi-o." The full set is *me, te, o, a, nos, vos, os, as, and while the basic substitution rule is straightforward, European Portuguese adds a layer of phonological complexity that does not exist in Brazilian Portuguese or Spanish: the third-person forms o, a, os, as change their shape depending on what the verb ends in. After -r, -s, -z, they become -lo, -la, -los, -las (and the verb loses its final consonant). After nasal endings, they become -no, -na, -nos, -nas. Mastering these alternations is one of the clearest markers between a beginner and an intermediate speaker of European Portuguese.

The full paradigm

The first-person and second-person forms (me, te, nos, vos) have a single invariant shape and are easy to use. The third-person forms (o, a, os, as) are where most of the action happens — they agree in gender and number with whatever they replace, and they phonologically shift to lo/la/los/las or no/na/nos/nas depending on the preceding verb form.

Note the double role of nos: it means both "us" (1st person plural direct object) and is also the 1st person plural indirect object pronoun. Likewise, vos serves both functions. You disambiguate by context.

Basic replacement: how it works

The direct object pronoun replaces a noun phrase that would otherwise follow the verb. It must match the gender and number of the noun it replaces.

Placement: enclise is the European Portuguese default

Unlike Brazilian Portuguese (which prefers the pronoun before the verb) and unlike Spanish (which always puts pronouns before conjugated verbs), European Portuguese default placement is enclise — the pronoun comes after the verb and is attached with a hyphen.

This is the default. However, there are specific contexts (negation, certain conjunctions, adverbs, interrogatives, etc.) that force the pronoun before the verb (proclise). Those triggers are covered in detail on Próclise Triggers. For now, know that in a simple affirmative declarative sentence, the pronoun attaches after the verb with a hyphen.

The crucial phonological rule: o/a/os/as become -lo/-la/-los/-las

This is the rule that defines European Portuguese phonology in clitic contexts. When the verb ends in -r, -s, or -z, the pronouns o, a, os, as change to -lo, -la, -los, -las, and the verb loses its final consonant.

Why this exists: it's a historical phonological simplification. The Latin direct-object pronouns were illum, illam, illos, illas. In Portuguese, the il- fell off in most contexts, leaving bare o, a, os, as. But when preceded by a final -r, -s, -z, the consonant of the verb fused with the l- of the old pronoun, giving rl, sl, zl — which regularized to just l, taking the l from the pronoun. The result is that the verb loses its final consonant and the pronoun appears with an initial l-.

Notice the accent marks. When the verb loses a final -r, -s, -z, the stress of the truncated form often needs an accent to preserve the correct pronunciation: comprar → comprá-lo, faz → fá-lo, traz → trá-lo. Details follow in the accent section.

The accent after the verb loses its consonant

When the verb ends in a stressed vowel after losing its consonant, the vowel gets a graphic accent to preserve the correct pronunciation. The accent depends on the vowel:

The second rule: nasal endings trigger -no/-na/-nos/-nas

When the verb ends in a nasal sound — specifically, a final -m or the nasal diphthongs -ão, -õe — the pronouns o, a, os, as become -no, -na, -nos, -nas. The verb does not lose its ending here; the pronoun simply adopts an n- at the start.

This is the other big phonological alternation of European Portuguese. Most verb forms with a final -m are plural (eles fazem, elas veem, eles dão), and this is the environment where the rule kicks in most often.

Summary diagram: the three environments

Every time you attach o, a, os, as to a verb, you check the ending:

1. Verb ends in a vowel (comi, vejo, falava, pensou) → plain o, a, os, as, joined by a hyphen.
   • Vejo-a, falava-o, comi-os.
2. Verb ends in -r, -s, -z → pronoun becomes -lo, -la, -los, -las; verb loses its final consonant.
   • comer + o → comê-lo, vamos + as → vamo-las, faz + o → fá-lo.
3. Verb ends in a nasal (-m, -ão, -õe, -êm) → pronoun becomes -no, -na, -nos, -nas; verb keeps its ending.
   • comem + o → comem-no, dão + a → dão-na.

First and second person: simpler

Me, te, nos, vos are invariant — they don't undergo the -l- or -n- transformations, and they don't agree with anything. They just mean "me," "you (sg.)," "us," "you (pl.)." Placement follows the same enclise rule as the third-person forms.

Note: nos in writing can be ambiguous with the combined form n-os that results from nasal-ending + os. Context disambiguates.

Vos — still used, but feels formal/archaic in speech

Vos is the 2nd-person plural direct-object pronoun, historically paired with vós. Since vós itself is archaic in modern speech, vos is partly caught up in the same shift — but in practice it is often retained as the everyday plural "you" object pronoun even when the subject is vocês.

In practice:

• Written and literary Portuguese uses vos freely with either vós or vocês.
• Spoken Portuguese in Portugal often keeps vos as the default object pronoun for vocês, although some speakers prefer to rephrase or to use os/as (parallel to the você → o/a pattern) in more formal contexts.

This gets tangled quickly — see Object Pronouns with Vocês for the full picture.

Neuter o — standing in for an idea or statement

Just as in Spanish and other Romance languages, Portuguese uses o to refer back to an entire idea or proposition — not a specific noun.

In modern European Portuguese, this neuter o is used more carefully than in Spanish. Many speakers simply drop it where Spanish requires lo. For example, English "I know" → Portuguese "Sei" (without o) is perfectly natural in most conversational contexts, whereas Spanish would insist on "Lo sé."

Third-person pronouns with the 2nd-person formal/polite registers

When you address someone as você or o senhor / a senhora, the direct-object pronoun used to refer to them is the 3rd-person form, matching their gender:

The four-verb test: verbs that show every pattern

Here are four verbs that between them demonstrate every phonological environment. Practice swapping pronouns in and out.

ver — to see (ends in -r)

fazer — to do/make (various endings including -z and -zem)

pôr — to put (ends in -r, but stem is short)

dar — to give (nasal 3rd pl. dão)

Quick practice table

Here is a consolidated table of how the 3rd-person direct-object pronouns combine with common verb forms. Memorize this pattern, not each row — the pattern generalizes.

Contrast with Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese has essentially abandoned the -lo/-la and -no/-na alternations in speech. In spoken Brazilian Portuguese:

• "Vou ver ele" instead of "Vou vê-lo" — they use the stressed pronoun ele/ela directly after the verb.
• "Eles compram ele" instead of "Compram-no".
• Written Brazilian Portuguese does preserve -lo/-la in formal/literary registers, but it is far less common than in European Portuguese.

For European Portuguese, using "Vou ver ele" instead of "Vou vê-lo" is strongly dispreferred — it is marked as Brazilian or colloquial to the point of being substandard in written EP. Stick with the clitic forms.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• The direct-object pronouns are me, te, o, a, nos, vos, os, as — matching the person, gender, and number of the object.
• European Portuguese default placement is enclise: pronoun after the verb with a hyphen.
• The third-person forms undergo two key phonological rules:
  • After -r, -s, -z: o/a/os/as → -lo/-la/-los/-las, verb drops its final consonant, accent may be added.
  • After nasal endings (-m, -ão, -õe, -êm): o/a/os/as → -no/-na/-nos/-nas, verb keeps its ending.
  • After a vowel: the pronoun stays plain.
• First- and second-person forms (me, te, nos, vos) don't undergo these transformations.
• Neuter o replaces ideas and propositions, though European Portuguese drops it more often than Spanish does.
• Brazilian Portuguese largely abandons these clitic alternations in speech; European Portuguese preserves them fully in both writing and speech.
• Proclise triggers (negation, conjunctions, adverbs, interrogatives) move the pronoun before the verb — covered separately in Proclise Triggers.