Subject Pronouns (Eu, Tu, Ele...) | Portuguese (Portugal) Grammar

Subject pronouns in European Portuguese — eu, tu, ele, ela, você, nós, vós, eles, elas, vocês — identify who is performing the action of the verb. What makes Portuguese different from English is that you usually don't say them. Portuguese is a pro-drop (null-subject) language, meaning verb endings are informative enough to carry the subject on their own. Learning when to omit a pronoun is just as important as learning the pronouns themselves, and in European Portuguese, the social weight of each pronoun — especially the choice between tu, você, and o senhor — is something you'll navigate every time you open your mouth.

The full paradigm

Person	Singular	Plural
1st	eu — I	nós — we
2nd (informal)	tu — you	vós — you all (archaic)
3rd / 2nd formal	ele, ela, você — he, she, you	eles, elas, vocês — they (m.), they (f.), you all

Three things in this table need immediate explanation:

Você takes third-person verb forms — not second-person. When you say você fala ("you speak"), the verb fala is the same form used for ele fala ("he speaks"). This is unlike English, where "you speak" uses a distinct form.
Vós is essentially dead in modern spoken European Portuguese. You will see it in prayers, old literature, courtroom oratory, and a few northern rural dialects — but if you address a group of friends in Lisbon with vós, they will assume you are joking or reciting poetry. Modern European Portuguese uses vocês for "you all."
The 2nd-person forms are not synonymous with the 3rd-person forms, even though they look alike. Você and ele share the same verb endings, but they mean different things — and calling someone você when you should say tu (or vice versa) is a social misstep, not a grammatical one.

Eu sou portuguesa, o meu marido é francês.

I'm Portuguese (f.), my husband is French.

Tu estudas medicina, não estudas?

You're studying medicine, aren't you?

Eles chegaram tarde outra vez.

They arrived late again.

Vocês querem ficar para o jantar?

Do you (all) want to stay for dinner?

Portuguese is a pro-drop language — omit the pronoun by default

This is the single most important habit to build when learning Portuguese. Because each conjugated form has a distinctive ending, the verb already announces its subject. Including the pronoun adds emphasis, contrast, or disambiguation — but by default, you leave it out.

Falo português há cinco anos.

I've been speaking Portuguese for five years.

— Já comeste? — Ainda não, estou à espera do João.

— Have you eaten? — Not yet, I'm waiting for João.

Moramos no Porto desde 2019.

We've lived in Porto since 2019.

Vou ao supermercado, queres alguma coisa?

I'm going to the supermarket, do you want anything?

Notice that none of these sentences use eu, tu, or nós as the subject. A Portuguese speaker saying "Eu falo português há cinco anos" sounds like they are emphasizing themselves — "I speak Portuguese (as opposed to my colleague who doesn't)." The default neutral sentence is "Falo português há cinco anos."

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If you find yourself starting every sentence with eu, you are almost certainly over-using it. An over-pronounced "I" in Portuguese sounds egocentric in the same way that saying "I, myself, personally think..." does in English — technically grammatical, rhetorically heavy.

When subject pronouns ARE required

There are four situations where you must keep the pronoun:

1. Emphasis or contrast

Using the pronoun adds stress, either to contrast two subjects or to highlight one.

Eu faço o jantar, tu lavas a loiça. Combinado?

I'll make dinner, you do the dishes. Deal?

Eles querem ir ao cinema, mas nós preferimos ficar em casa.

They want to go to the cinema, but we prefer to stay home.

Foste tu que partiste o copo.

You were the one who broke the glass.

In the last example — a cleft construction with foi... que — Portuguese requires the pronoun because the whole point of the sentence is to single out who did it.

2. Disambiguation with third-person forms

This is where pro-drop breaks down. The third-person singular form — ele fala, ela fala, você fala, o senhor fala, o João fala — is identical for multiple possible subjects. If context doesn't make it clear who you mean, you need the pronoun or a noun.

Ela trabalha num banco, ele é professor.

She works at a bank, he's a teacher.

Eles dizem que sim, mas elas acham que não.

They (m.) say yes, but they (f.) think not.

Without the pronouns in these examples, the listener has no way to tell who is doing what. Similarly, if you are talking about someone and then address them, you typically need você (or a title) to signal the shift.

3. Beginning of discourse / new topic

When you introduce a subject out of the blue — starting a conversation, opening a story, or changing topics abruptly — a pronoun can help the listener orient.

Eu não sei o que te hei-de dizer.

I don't know what to tell you.

Nós nunca fomos ao Algarve. Vocês recomendam?

We've never been to the Algarve. Do you recommend it?

4. After a conjunction when the subject changes

When two clauses are linked and the subject of the second clause is different from the first, the new subject often needs a pronoun.

Eu fui ao jantar, mas ele ficou em casa.

I went to the dinner, but he stayed home.

Tu, você, o senhor/a senhora — the three registers of "you"

In European Portuguese, the 2nd-person address system has three tiers, and choosing correctly is one of the most culturally loaded decisions a learner makes. Get it wrong and you can sound rude, servile, or simply foreign.

Pronoun	Register	Verb ending	Use with
tu	informal / familiar	2nd person sg. (-s ending)	family, friends, children, close colleagues, pets
você	formal-neutral / distancing	3rd person sg. (same as ele/ela)	people you want to keep at a polite distance; some professional contexts
o senhor / a senhora	formal / respectful	3rd person sg.	strangers, elderly people, authority figures, shop customers

A crucial warning for learners arriving from Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, or textbook-style courses: in Portugal, você is not the polite default the way usted is in Spanish or você is in Brazil. Using você with a Portuguese stranger can feel chilly or corrective — as if you were holding them at arm's length. For genuinely polite address, European Portuguese speakers often use o senhor / a senhora, or they drop the pronoun entirely and let the verb carry the meaning: "Quer um café?" ("Would you like a coffee?").

This topic is explored in depth on two dedicated pages:

Tu sabes onde está a minha carteira?

Do you know where my wallet is? (to a family member)

Você é o novo colega, não é?

You're the new colleague, aren't you? (polite but neutral — keeping a professional distance)

O senhor já foi atendido?

Have you already been helped, sir? (shop assistant to customer)

A gente — the colloquial "we"

European Portuguese has a peculiar pronoun that defies the paradigm: a gente, literally "the people." It is used instead of nós in informal speech, and it takes a third-person singular verb (because gente is a grammatically singular feminine noun — but it refers to "us").

A gente vai ao concerto amanhã, queres vir?

We're going to the concert tomorrow, want to come? (informal)

A gente pode falar depois do jantar.

We can talk after dinner. (informal)

Compare with the neutral, more formal nós:

Nós vamos ao concerto amanhã.

We're going to the concert tomorrow. (neutral)

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A gente is extremely common in casual European Portuguese, especially among younger speakers. But watch the agreement — it's third-person singular, not first-person plural: a gente vai (not a gente vamos). In careful writing, use nós. In conversation with friends, a gente is natural.

Note the related possessive shift: speakers who use a gente often say a nossa ("our"), keeping the first-person-plural possessive even with a third-person-singular pronoun. "A gente vai na nossa carrinha" ("We're going in our van") is perfectly natural. Strict prescriptivists sometimes criticize this construction, but it is the living norm in spoken Portuguese.

Vós — the archaic plural

Vós deserves a brief note because learners will encounter it in written material and may wonder what to do with it. In the vast majority of modern European Portuguese, vós has been completely replaced by vocês (with third-person-plural verb forms). You will see vós in:

Liturgical and religious Portuguese (archaic/literary): "Vós sois o sal da terra" — "You are the salt of the earth."
Courtroom and parliamentary rhetoric (formal/literary): "Peço-vos que considereis esta questão" — "I ask you to consider this matter."
Certain rural northern dialects (regional: Minho, Trás-os-Montes), where vós is still heard in everyday speech alongside verb forms like vós ides, vós sabeis.
Older literature and poetry (archaic/literary).

Vós que lestes Camões sabeis do que falo.

You who have read Camões know what I'm talking about. (literary/archaic)

Vocês leram o livro?

Did you (all) read the book? (modern European Portuguese)

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Don't actively produce vós forms in everyday speech — you'll sound like a character from a 19th-century novel. But do learn to recognize vós ides, vós sois, vós tendes, because they appear in hymns, old recipes, and some regional speech.

Quick reference: pronouns and verb endings

Here is the practical picture with three common verbs — falar (to speak), comer (to eat), and partir (to leave) — in the present indicative:

Pronoun	falar	comer	partir
eu	falo	como	parto
tu	falas	comes	partes
ele / ela / você	fala	come	parte
nós	falamos	comemos	partimos
vós (archaic)	falais	comeis	partis
eles / elas / vocês	falam	comem	partem

Notice that the eu, tu, nós, and eles forms are each visibly distinct. That is exactly why the pronoun is usually optional — the ending alone tells the listener which person is doing the verb. Only the ele/ela/você slot is ambiguous, which is why that slot is where pronouns get added most often.

Comparison with English

English keeps subject pronouns almost always: "I speak, you speak, we speak." Dropping them produces ungrammatical or telegraphic sentences ("Speak Portuguese" is not equivalent to "I speak Portuguese"). Portuguese is the opposite: keeping them adds emphasis that English doesn't have a clean tool for.

Consider this translation problem:

Eu fiz o trabalho todo.

I did all the work. (with strong contrast — meaning 'I was the one who did it, not you')

Fiz o trabalho todo.

I did all the work. (neutral statement)

Both English sentences translate the same way. But in Portuguese, the first carries a clear pragmatic message — "I did it, so don't pretend otherwise" — whereas the second is a flat report of fact. English speakers learning Portuguese often over-produce the first form without realizing they are coming across as defensive or confrontational.

Common mistakes

❌ Eu sou americano e eu falo inglês e eu estudo português.

Incorrect — over-produced pronouns make this sound emphatic or defensive, not neutral.

✅ Sou americano, falo inglês e estudo português.

I'm American, I speak English, and I study Portuguese. (neutral, natural European Portuguese)

❌ Você sabe onde estão as chaves? (to your partner)

Incorrect register — using você with your partner sounds cold and distant in European Portuguese.

✅ Sabes onde estão as chaves?

Do you know where the keys are? (to your partner — natural, drops pronoun entirely)

❌ A gente vamos ao cinema.

Incorrect agreement — a gente is grammatically 3rd person singular, not 1st person plural.

✅ A gente vai ao cinema.

We're going to the cinema. (a gente + 3rd singular verb)

❌ Vós querem café?

Incorrect — either use archaic vós quereis (ceremonial) or modern vocês querem.

✅ Vocês querem café?

Do you (all) want coffee? (modern EP)

❌ Tu fala inglês?

Incorrect — tu requires 2nd-person singular ending: falas, not fala.

✅ Tu falas inglês?

Do you speak English? (informal)

The last mistake is especially common among learners influenced by Brazilian Portuguese, where tu is sometimes used colloquially with 3rd-person verb forms. In European Portuguese, that combination is considered uneducated — tu demands the -s ending every time.

Key takeaways

Portuguese has nine commonly used subject pronouns: eu, tu, ele, ela, você, nós, eles, elas, vocês. (Vós exists but is archaic.)
Portuguese is pro-drop: omit the pronoun unless you need it for emphasis, contrast, disambiguation, or to introduce a new subject.
Você takes third-person verb forms, not second-person.
In European Portuguese, tu is the neutral informal you. Você is semi-formal and can feel cold. For real formality, use o senhor / a senhora.
A gente is a colloquial alternative to nós, used with 3rd-person singular verbs.
Vós is effectively extinct in daily speech — recognize it but don't produce it.