Você, Tu, or O Senhor: How to Say You in Brazilian Portuguese

Your textbook lists two words for “you.” Brazil uses one of them almost everywhere, reduces it to a single syllable in fast speech, and keeps a third, more polite form for people it wants to honor. Here is the short answer: say você, give it the verb form you use for ele and ela, and learn when to switch to o senhor or a senhora.

Você: the default everywhere

Você is how Brazilians address one person in daily life. Friends, coworkers, the cashier, a stranger asking for directions, your teacher, your boss. It is neither formal nor casual. It is simply the word.

The grammar has one twist that pays off later. Historically você comes from vossa mercê, “your grace,” a noun phrase that took a third-person verb. The phrase shrank, the verb agreement stayed. So você sits in the same conjugation row as ele and ela, which means one verb form covers three subjects.

If you have read our guide to a gente vs nós, the pattern will look familiar. Brazilian Portuguese keeps pushing subjects into the third-person row, and the result is that the ele form does most of the work in conversation.

Cê: what você becomes in fast speech

Say você at conversation speed and the first syllable drops. What comes out is cê, and it is everywhere: cê vai?, cê tá bem?, cê viu isso?. Nobody writes it in an email, everybody says it at the table.

Two notes. First, cê only works as a subject. After a preposition or as an object the full word returns: pra você, com você, never pra cê. Second, in Minas Gerais and parts of the interior you will also hear ocê, a middle step between the full word and the short one. You do not need to produce either. You need to hear them, because they hide the subject of half the sentences aimed at you. Our guide to spoken Portuguese contractions covers cê alongside tá, pra and the rest of the set.

Tu: where it lives and how it sounds

Tu is the “you” of Portugal and of the classic conjugation table. In Brazil it is regional. You will hear it as the everyday pronoun in Rio Grande do Sul, in Pará, in parts of the Northeast (Maranhão and Pernambuco, for instance) and in some speech in Rio, where it mixes with você in the same conversation.

The detail that surprises learners: most Brazilians who say tu pair it with the same third-person verb as você. Tu vai, tu fala, tu quer. The textbook second-person endings (tu vais, tu falas) survive mainly in parts of the South and the far North, and in careful speech. If you move to Porto Alegre or Belém, copy the people around you. Anywhere else, keep você and treat tu as something to recognize.

O senhor and a senhora: when respect is the point

Brazil has a polite “you,” and it is not tu. It is o senhor for a man and a senhora for a woman. Grammatically they are nouns, so the verb stays in the third person, exactly like você. Nothing new to conjugate.

When to use it

The trigger is a gap in age or position, or a situation where you are serving someone. Use o senhor and a senhora with people clearly older than you, with an elderly stranger, with a doctor or a police officer, with a customer if you are the one behind the counter, and with your partner’s parents on the day you meet them. Many Brazilians also use it with their own grandparents, and some families keep it for parents too.

How Brazilians let you drop it

The polite form is a starting point, not a life sentence. When the older person decides the distance is unnecessary, they say so, and the phrase is almost always the same.

Until you hear that sentence, stay with o senhor or a senhora. The cost of being one notch too polite is a warm correction. The cost of being one notch too familiar with a mother-in-law is a longer conversation later. If that mother-in-law is in your future, our guide on learning Portuguese for a Brazilian partner goes further into family register.

Senhor without the article

You will also hear senhor and senhora as a bare title in service situations, the way English uses “sir” and “ma’am”: Pois não, senhora, Bom dia, senhor. Same politeness, no pronoun role.

Vocês: the only plural you need

For two or more people, Brazilian Portuguese has one word: vocês. It takes the same plural verb as eles and elas. The old plural vós exists in grammar books, in the Bible and in a few speeches. Nobody in Brazil will say it to you, and you should not say it to anyone.

The polite plural works the same way: os senhores and as senhoras, with the plural verb. Os senhores querem ver o cardápio? is what a waiter says to a table of older guests.

Te, você, seu: the forms that travel with você

Choosing você as the subject raises a second question: which words mean “you” as an object, and which mean “your.” Speech and the strict grammar give different answers, and the spoken one is the one you will meet.

The object: te, or você after a preposition

Strict grammar pairs você with the object pronoun o or a and the indirect lhe. Brazilians in conversation use te, the object form that historically belongs to tu, and they combine it with você as the subject without a second thought.

So the working pattern is: te before the verb, você after a preposition. With o senhor and a senhora, careful speakers keep the formal lhe or repeat the noun: Posso lhe ajudar?, Posso ajudar o senhor?

The possessive: seu, sua, and the dele problem

“Your” is seu for a masculine noun and sua for a feminine one, agreeing with the thing owned, not with you. Seu carro, sua casa. In conversation you will also hear teu and tua next to você, for the same reason te shows up: the tu forms leaked into everyday use.

Here is the catch. Because você sits in the third-person row, seu and sua also mean “his,” “her” and “their.” A sua casa can be your house or her house. Brazilians solve it by reserving seu and sua for “your,” and saying dele, dela, deles and delas (of him, of her, of them) after the noun for everyone else.

Follow that split and the ambiguity disappears: seu points at the person you are talking to, dele and dela point at someone else.

Você vs tu vs o senhor, side by side

One more thing the table cannot show: the greeting you open with sets the register before the pronoun does. Bom dia, senhora and E aí, cê tá bem? announce two different conversations. Our guide to Brazilian greetings pairs each opener with the level of formality it carries.

Common mistakes

• Você falas português?

  Você fala português?

  Você takes the ele and ela form. The -s ending belongs to tu, and mixing the two is the most common error on the whole page.

• Tu falas português? (in São Paulo)

  Você fala português?

  Paulistanos do not say tu. Where Brazilians do, most of them still use the third-person verb: tu fala. Keep você unless the locals around you say otherwise.

• Vós falais português?

  Vocês falam português?

  Vós is a museum piece. The plural you is vocês with the eles verb form, everywhere in Brazil.

• A Ana chegou e a sua mãe também.

  A Ana chegou e a mãe dela também.

  Sua here reads as 'your' to a Brazilian ear. When you mean his, her or their, put dele, dela or deles after the noun.

• Oi, você mora aqui? (to your partner's mother, day one)

  Oi, a senhora mora aqui?

  Start with a senhora or o senhor. She will say pode me chamar de você when she wants to, and then you switch.

• Isso é pra cê.

  Isso é pra você.

  Cê only replaces você as the subject. After a preposition the full word comes back.

Quick recap

KEEP GOING

Hear você, cê and a senhora in real sentences

Everyday Brazilian Portuguese is 100 phrases Brazilians say every day, organized in themed chapters, each one recorded at two speeds, slow first and then natural. You hear how você shrinks to cê in a fast question and how a senhora sits inside a polite one, so the forms on this page stop being a table and start being sounds you recognize.

Get Everyday PortugueseInstant download. From $9.90.