Portuguese Subject Pronouns

I, you, she, he, it, we, they. These are all subject pronouns and you are about to learn what they look like in European Portuguese and a few particular aspects concerning their usage.

6 Persons, 5 Verb Forms

These days, Portuguese verb conjugations comprise 5 verb forms: 3 singular and 2 plural (the 2- and 3-person plural share the same verb form). Take the verb comer (eat) as an example:

			SINGULAR
	1-person	2-person	3-person
PRONOUN	Eu	Tu	Ele, Ela
V. FORM	como	comes	come

			PLURAL
	1-person	2-person	3-person
PRONOUN	Nós	Vocês	Eles, Elas
V. FORM	comemos	comem	comem

It hasn’t always been like that though. Only a couple of generations ago, the 2-person plural had a slightly different pronoun coupled with its own verb form:

			PLURAL
	1-person	2-person	3-person
PRONOUN	Nós	Vós	Eles, Elas
V. FORM	comemos	comeis	comem

Even though vós comeis sounds extremely dated (no one says it these days), a few Portuguese textbooks still teach verb conjugation the old way. So, be mindful of that.