Portuguese Verb-Pronoun Placement

You have probably noticed that when using reflexive verbs, the reflexive pronoun placement varies – sometimes comes after the verb, sometimes precedes the verb. The same happens with direct and indirect object pronouns (me, te, lhe, o/a, etc.) or with the impersonal se.

The patterns governing verb-pronoun placement are the same for object and reflexive pronouns and the impersonal se; I will use any of them in the sentence examples below. Read on.

Single Verb

In single-verb sentences, by default, pronouns come after the verb and with a hyphen in between:

Eu deito–me todos os dias pelas 22h.
I go to bed every day at around 10 pm.

Ela deu–lhe um abraço.
She gave him a hug.

However, there are situations where these pronouns swap positions with the verb. In that case, there’s no hyphen in between. 

Accordingly, the reversed word order will apply when the verb is preceded by either (1) negative words, (2) question words, (3) subordinating conjunctions and prepositions, (4) adverbs, or (5) indefinite pronouns: