His, Hers, Yours, and Theirs
There are just a few more Portuguese possessives to learn:
| Subject | Possessive Pronoun/Determiner | English Equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Ele, Ela, Você | Seu Sua Seus Suas | His, Her/Hers, Your/Yours (formal) |
| Eles, Elas | Seu Sua Seus Suas | Their, Theirs |
See what happens there? The pronouns/determiners for the third-person singular (+ você) and the third-person plural are all the same!
Gender and Number Agreement
Once again, the pronouns or determiners must agree with the respective noun, not with the subject!
If we’re talking about single objects such as um carroa car (masc. noun) and uma motaa motorcycle (fem. noun), here’s what we get:
- O seu carro e a sua mota.His car and his bike. – Each belonging to him
- O seu carro e a sua mota.Her car and her bike. – Each belonging to her
- O seu carro e a sua mota.Your car and your bike. – Each belonging to you (individual, formal)
- O seu carro e a sua mota.Their car and their bike. – Each belonging to them
As you can see, the Portuguese sentence is the same in every situation! In order to fully understand the sentence, you would have to know who was being referred to from previous context.
If we had multiple cars and multiple bikes, we’d just need to pluralize the determiners to match:
- Os seus carros e as suas motas. – Again, the cars and bikes could be his, hers, yours (formal), or theirs.
These constructions tend to be used more often in writing and in formal speech because they create so much ambiguity. Later you’ll learn a convenient workaround that the Portuguese language gives us to use in these cases when you need more context. You will still hear this version however, so let’s practice with seu and its variants first before moving ahead to the other (de + pronoun) form.
a little confusing. What about Vosso: Your? vs Suas and seus: Your?
‘Vosso’ is for the second-person plural (Vocês), while ‘Seu(s)’ and ‘Sua(s)’ is for the formal second-person singular (Você) 🙂
Somewhere I picked up the phrase “Obrigada pela tua ajuda.” and have used it in shops etc. when someone has gone out of their way to assist me.
But now I see that may be too informal, right?
Should I be using “sua” instead when thanking clerks, cashiers, or at the medical office?
Yes, “tua” would usually be too informal in those settings. “Obrigada pela sua ajuda” would be the default choice, unless the other person also addresses you informally 🙂
I’m just going to Ignore the top two and use dele. It causes too much confusion to apply ‘his’ to seu/sua in any circumstance. It would literally never be necessary.
O seu carro e a sua mota.
Your (formal/singular) car and your (formal/singularl) bike.
– Each belonging to you (formal).
And then the plural equiv. of the above is all that anybody will ever need.
I’m learned with dele/ dela/ deles/ delas
And i feel more confortable to use this way…
Is this way totally wrong?
No, this is not wrong at all. In fact, it’s much more common to hear dele, dela, deles, delas. You will read more about using those forms later in the Possessives unit. We think it’s important to teach both ways because you will hear both, but as you will find out, using dele,etc is typically a better choice because it makes what you’re saying less ambiguous. 🙂
Hello 🙂 It’s my first question here.
Which possessive adjective is correct to use:
Os senhores Mendes, onde está a sua/a vossa casa?
I don’t think I quite understood it from the grammar reference about possessives.
In Spanish I’d use “su casa” in such case, but here I’m a bit confused.
Olá! For the plural you, we’d use the possessive “vossa” 🙂 We wouldn’t formulate the question like that, by the way -> the definite article (os) shouldn’t be used here and “senhores Mendes” doesn’t sound idiomatic. You could simply ask “Onde está a vossa casa?”, because in context, it would probably already be clear who you were talking to.
Muito obrigada 😊
I guess I wrote “Os senhores Mendes” to indicate that I was referring to the plural formal “you”.
So that would mean that you use the same adjective for informal and formal plural “you” (different than in case of singular possessives, where there is a distinction between “o teu” (informal singular “you”) and “o seu” (formal singular “you”).
Now it just needs to settle down in my “Portuguese” language drawer before I can use it without much previous analysis.
You’re welcome! Don’t worry, I understood that you wanted to indicate that it was plural – I was just taking the chance to give you some extra tips 🙂
And that’s correct – for the plural ‘you’, there is no informal/formal difference, but the difference exists for the singular ‘you’.
Referring to the lessons previous to this page: yet another group of lessons that don’t cover even a fraction of the language of previous units. Why aren’t you already including Por in these phrases? Or any colours? Or adjectives? Or a variety of verbs? Just loads and loads of references to bloody hats! Instead they languish in the hundreds of phrases lumped into my smart review, which is so bulging and it’s pretty much completely demoralising. I’ve already messaged someone about this but it really feels I’m learning language once just to then not use it in future units.
Thanks for the feedback and I’m very sorry to hear you’re frustrated with the way the units are set up. I’m reviewing this unit and from what I can tell, most of the language is repeated from previous units.
For example, these all appear in past units, too:
Vocabulary: almoço, livro, sopa, carro, carta, amigo, morango, pai, mãe, roupa, café, mala, número, cão, bolo, casa, filha, filho, sapatos, menina, mulher, mão, etc.
Verbs: ser, estar, chegar, ter, comer, beber, ler, poder, querer, dar, comprar, falar, ouvir, etc.
Adjectives: suja, igual
Other grammar features: com, o, a, os, as, muito, de, personal pronouns, present tense, questions, negation, concepts of plurality/gender, etc.
(These examples are from the whole Possessives unit, not just the last couple lessons.)
Sorry, I’m not sure what you meant about the hats because I’m only seeing 1 phrase in this unit’s lessons about hats. Did you mean in your Smart Review? If so, there’s always the option to remove the hat-related phrases. (You can do this at the end of each Smart Review session, or from the Manage Phrases page.)
You’re right that we didn’t include pôr or colors in this one. In general, we try to include a balance of old and new content, so not everything will get repeated right away.
If it’s feeling mostly new and overwhelming, that’s a good sign that it would be helpful to review before moving forward to new units. Frequent reviewing is expected, because there is a lot of new information to introduce in A1.
I understand it’s feeling discouraging for you. It sounds like the tips from my last email were not helpful, but let me know if I can clarify anything or answer any questions. In general, my recommendations would still be to remove phrases that aren’t helpful, to spend more time with Smart Review (and/or, to start from the beginning of the Units again to get another round of repetition of what has been learned so far), and to create custom reviews as needed to target the areas you feel you need more practice with.
We’ve tried to set it up to be flexible, to accommodate the wide variety of learning styles and paces, but of course, it might just not be a good fit for how you prefer to learn, so that’s understandable. Feel free to reach out if there’s something we can help with, though.
Molly, what a gracious, helpful reply to a rather rude comment 🙂
I love this app. I like the way I can choose which units to learn and not necessarily do them in the order given. I feel I can do this because the example phrases to learn are short and include a mix of the old and new, with sometimes a tantalising word that I will understand only later. I had got up to the – ar verbs, wanted a change, so skipped forward to colours, then the time of day, and am now dipping into possessives, which I was keen to learn. Then I will go back to the verbs. This makes it fun for me. I think it is impossible to learn even the basics of a language all at once, and no ‘order’ will be right for everyone, so I think PP has done a great job. By the way, I am 67 and have spent my working life analysing and questioning. Now I have decided to learn like a baby and just repeat and accept what I hear. It’s very liberating, and I know more of the none-English phrasings/grammar will make sense as I go on. The listen and learn smart review is great for me and is on when I wash up etc. Obrigada!
Thanks so much, Jo! So glad to hear it has been helpful for you. 😊