Vou lhe avisar quando eu chegar.

I will let you know when I get there.

Breakdown of Vou lhe avisar quando eu chegar.

• eu: I
• ir: to go (future auxiliary)
• quando: when
• lhe: you

Questions & Answers about Vou lhe avisar quando eu chegar.

Why is vou avisar used instead of a simple future like avisarei?

In Brazilian Portuguese, ir + infinitive is the most common way to talk about the future in everyday speech. So vou avisar sounds natural and conversational.

Avisarei is also correct, but it sounds more formal, more written, or more emphatic. In normal spoken Brazilian Portuguese, vou avisar is usually what you will hear.

What does lhe mean here?

Here, lhe means something like to you.

It is an unstressed object pronoun. With avisar, Portuguese often uses a structure like avisar algo a alguém = to inform something to someone. In this sentence, the someone is expressed by lhe.

A useful extra point: lhe can also mean to him or to her in other contexts. The exact meaning depends on who is being addressed or talked about.

Why is it lhe avisar instead of avisar-lhe?

In Brazilian Portuguese, putting the pronoun before the infinitive is very common: vou lhe avisar.

The version vou avisar-lhe is grammatical, but it sounds more formal and is less common in everyday Brazilian speech. It can also sound more literary or more European Portuguese in tone.

So if you are aiming for natural spoken Brazilian Portuguese, vou lhe avisar is a very good choice.