Second Person In Portuguese

There is a phenomenon related to the semantic second-person in Portuguese. There is a series of clitics and obliques associated with uncorresponding subject and, at times, verb forms. It is not limited to Brazil or Portugal alone, it occurs in both countries, though realized in different ways. These are assymetrical uses, so to speak, if we follow the prescriptive grammar. Nonetheless, many of these have become generalized as standard in each country and are so freely used. We'll take a look at how these pronominal systems have become innovated, having moved aside distinctions found in the paradigms as derived from Latin and bringing in new ways to render them.

All these inovations involve the second-person being, in one way or another, matched up with the grammatical third-person.
The main reason for all this begins with the introduction of Vossa Mercê as a mode of polite direct address. Vossa Mercê (Your Mercy) was just one of several ways of formal address that developed over centuries in Portuguese, having parallels with the other Iberian languages (i.e. Spanish Vuestra Merced). This type of address was used with third-person morphology, hence creating a 'distance' between the speaker and the interlocutor. The direct address went from tu in the singular and vos in the plural in Latin (See Chart 1A), yielding the forms tu and vós in Portuguese, with a full formal/familiar distinction with tu as familiar, and vós as both singular formal and plural, this last one with no distinction between formal or familiar, as in modern French (Chart 1B). As these forms became too common with the populace, new polite forms began to emerge using a possessive and third person forms. Among the most significant ones are Vossa Excelência (Your Excellency) and Vossa Mercê (Your Mercy). Though several of these new forms were used at one time, Vossa Mercê became the most commonly used. Having won out, it went through several intermediate stages, including Vossemecê, Vossmecê, Vomecê, and Vomcê, until it was standardized as você (though now, particularly in Brazil, the evolution has continued to ocê, cê). The plural polite form followed the singular, and on this model it was standardized as vocês (Chart 1C).

Chart 1A Singular Plural tu vos

Chart 1B Singular Plural Familiar tu vós Formal vós

Chart 1C Singular Plural Familiar tu vós Formal você vocês

However, it doesn't stop here. The newly introduced synthetic forms did not completely displace the old forms. As of now, the two systems coexist, not as two, side by side, but as one, complexly intermingled.

Brazil
In Brazil, as I have stated on previous posts, the grammatical second person pronouns and their verbs forms have disappeared from the written and spoken languages, though these can often be seen in poetry and religious texts. Indeed, they have become archaisms for the vast majority of Brazilians. Chart 2 shows the second-person paradigm, standard in Brazil today.
Chart 2

	Singular	Plural
Familiar	você	vocês
Formal

A third category can be defined here, besides the familiar and formal: highly formal. In a highly formal situation, o senhor and a senhora are expected, or, especially in writing, Vossa Excelência, though this last one is the least common of all. Other than that, você is used in all situations (not everywhere though, as it will be seen). As you will see below, the current system of oblique pronouns in Brazil is somewhat of a hybrid, coming from the Second- and Third-Persons. I have listed você as third-person nominative because, as I stated, even though it is understood as second-person, it is gramatically third-person, thus, it uses the forms corresponding to "he/she/it", ele/ela.

Chart 3A. Third-P. Singular Subject você Direct O. o a Indirect O. lhe Reflexive se Possessive seu Prepositional você com você

3B. Second-P. Singular Subject tu Direct O. te Indirect O. te Reflexive te Possessive teu Prepositional ti contigo

3C. Second-P. Singular Address System Current in Brazil

Subject	você	Você é feliz.
Direct O.	te	Você está aqui? Não te vejo.
Indirect O.	te	Vou te dar algo.
Reflexive	se	Não sei como você se chama.
Possessive	seu	Qual é seu nome?
Prepositional	você	Isto é para você.
	com você	Ela irá com você.

Charts 3A and 3B show the third and second subject (nominative) forms, followed by their corresponding oblique cases: direct object (accusative), indirect object (dative), reflexive, possessive (genitive), and last one named prepositional, where I list the forms which occur after most preprositions, including how it contracts with the preposition com, hence in 3A, the form does not contract, whereas in 3B, it does. When used reflexively, the third-person prepositional forms become si and consigo (notice the contraction with com), respectively.
Chart 3C shows the second-person singular paradigm, in which are found forms from the original second- and third-persons, current and standard in Brazil. The underlined forms in 3C are the ones that have penetrated into what was originally solely third-person. The language professors may still follow the original scheme, as in 3A, but in reality, the paradigm as in 3C is used at all social levels, from the man in the street to the college graduate. This is what feels instinctive to Brazilians, even if through school they learn and use the system in 3A, which may appear, for instance, in the language section of college entrance exams. As an example, I will cite the now famous slogan used in Brazil for an AIDS prevention campaign: Se você não se cuidar, a AIDS vai te pegar (If you don't take care of yourself, AIDS will get you). Here we see the subject (você), the reflexive pronoun (se), and the verb (cuidar), all of which are third-person. In the second part, however, we see te, which is grammatically second-person, used with the other pronouns which are third-person, together mixed to reference semantically second-person. Like I said, this is a standard practice in Brazil (not in Portugal). If this same sentence had been said instead: Se você não se cuidar, a AIDS vai o pegar, that is, with the scheme as in 3A, in which all pronouns are third-person, the reaction from the public would not have been the same. Brazilians see the scheme in 3A as being too 'scholarly', too formal, and even, quite pedantic. In order to connect with the people, 3C had to be used, which is what is said everyday in Brazil. If anything, as an alternative, without 'mixing' the grammatical persons, te could have been avoided, and, in its place, another você could have been used, only this time, after the verb: Se você não se cuidar, a AIDS vai pegar você, leading us into yet another pronominal paradigm living side by side the one we have just been looking at.
Chart 3D

Subject	você	você	Você é feliz.
Direct O.	te	você	Você está aqui? Não vejo você.
Indirect O.	te	a/pra você	Vou dar algo pra você.
Reflexive	se	você*	Registre você!
Possessive	seu	de você*	Este carro não é dela; é de você.
Prepositional	você	você	Isto é para você.
	com você	com você	Ela irá com você.

In 3D, we can see the reduction of the forms, even of those from the original second-person (te), with an abundance of você: você has abandoned its role as a pure subject pronoun and moved on to serve other grammatical uses. The two forms marked with asterisks, the reflexive and possessive, are rare, though I have recorded instances of their existance. First, seu, in Brazil, is explicitly taken to mean "yours (sg.)". So while there may be ambiguity on whether a certain seu means "hers, his, yours (sg.), yours (pl.), theirs", unless reading some sort of formal text, seu will always be perceived as "yours (sg.)", e.g. Ela vendeu sua casa (She sold your house); therefore, the locution de você is not truly necessary as are other persons (i.e. dela, dele, etc.)¹. The você used as a reflexive pronoun, the rarest possible form, is attested in phrases such as Registre você! (Register yourself!) for the usual Registre-se (or, as it's common in Brazil to prepose the pronouns, Se registre), and Veja você! for Veja-se.
The more significant forms are those used to serve as accusative and dative, which have played a major role in the Brazilian standard. In the third-person, the accusative in Brazil is no longer marked with the corresponding pronouns as we see them in 3A (o/a). Surely, they can be found in certain types of writing, but for the average Brazilian, these seem too superficial. As you can see in 3D, the direct-object form is identical to the subject one, in a phenomenon ocurring with all third-person pronouns, and even extending to other persons at times. In the direct address, te preposed to the verb, or, você postposed to it, will convey a direct object; the choice to use either one generally has to do with euphony, though emphasis and style can play a part in this, or an individual may employ both indiscriminately. An as example, let's take the two ways of saying "I love you" which are most frequently heard in Brazil: Te amo and Amo você. This shows, in a clear way, what I have just stated about direct objects in the same way than the AIDS slogan above. The first example, Te amo, uses the form presented in Chart 3C, a mixture between the originial second- and third-person paradigms; also notice here how the object pronoun is placed before the verb. In Amo você, we see in action the system in Chart 3D: the direct object has the same form as its subject form, only postposed to the main verb. If we add to this the fact that the other grammatical persons are involved as well, we end up with a word order that is much stricter and rigid. Even though in Portugal, in certain clauses and interrogatives, after prepositions or relative pronouns, the subject tends to be placed after the verb, in Brazil, the subject is always fixed before the verb, because, as we have seen, the same form could play different functions (subject, object). Therefore, while in Portugal we would hear Como se chama você?, in Brazil we would hear Como você se chama?, and even though both constructions would be understood in either country, each country uses its own construction standardly. However, there could indeed be instances in Brazil where the placement of the pronoun would change the meaning completely. Let's take the phrases: Não sei quem você viu and Não sei quem viu você. Here, we see você in two different places, after and before the verb. In Portugal, as I said, it would be customary to place the subject after the relative pronoun, though both phrases would be understood as being the same: I don't know whom you saw. In Brazil, nonetheless, due to what has just been discussed, the two phrases could convey two different ideas. The first phrase could be analyzed as: quem as the object of the second clause, você as its subject, and viu as the verb (with você as the subject); thus, meaning, "I don't know whom you saw". The second phrase, however, because of its word placement, could be analyzed by a Brazilian as: quem as the subject of the second clause, viu as its verb, and você as its direct object; thus, meaning, "I don't know who saw you". Two complete different things².
With the indirect object, something similar occurs. That is, the form corresponding to the subject appears as the object one, in this case, the indirect object as well. In Chart 3D, we see again that the pronoun from 3C is replaced by a variation of the subject form: você preceeded by pra, a reduction of para (to, for). Here, I use pra and not the more formal para because it's the former that is becoming generalized ³. This construction is commonly employed to replace the usual lhe as a direct object pronoun when this last one is emphasized, in which case it becomes a + pronoun. In this case, it would then be: Vou perguntar-lhe algo » Vou perguntar algo a você. Para, in some cases, can be used instead of a, and in Brazil, para, or rather pra, is preferred over a for nearly all cases. So that instead of Vou perguntar-lhe algo, one would hear Vou perguntar algo pra você. Thus, lhe is generally displaced by te or pra você, as can been in Chart 3D.
If we look at these things from the perspective of prescriptive grammar, the correct forms should be: Amo-o (or Amo-a) instead of Amo você, if one talks to the person using você; Amo-te instead of Te amo, if one talks to the person using tu. Amo-o for a Brazilian does not flow well; neither would (Eu) o amo, with the object preposed to the verb. This would feel, like I said, too superficial, unnatural to a native Brazilian. Tu, as we saw above, has disappeared from the standard everyday language in Brazil, therefore, prescriptively, we should not find te at all here. The Brazilian, nonetheless, would say either Te amo or Amo você to express the same emotion. This principle of assimilating the oblique forms to the subject applies to the other persons as well, as I have stated. The prescriptive paradigm for the true third-person singular (i.e. not direct address) is that of Chart 3A, except that the subject and prepositional forms would involve ele (he) or ela (she). Thus, in the spoken language, instead of Ele a ama, we would find Ele ama ela (He loves her), which would be different from Ela ama ele coming from Ela o ama (She loves him). We see here again that the object pronouns are displaced by their subject forms; it's word order that tells us whether a particular pronoun is being used as subject or object. The plural walks right along the singular, following the same pattern (thus, ele conhece vocês (He knows you [pl.]) and ele conhece eles (He knows them) for ele os conhece). In the first person, eu (I) may displace its own oblique forms, so that we may find, for instance, você viu eu (You saw me) for standard Você me viu. Nós (we) and its oblique forms are frequently displaced by a gente. Hence, instead of Nós trabalhamos muito and Ela nos viu, it is common to hear A gente trabalha muito and Ela viu a gente. A gente, as you can see, is treated as third person (like você) even though it is used to reference the plural first person. This further reduces the morphological verb endings that differientiate each grammatical person from six in most tenses to three (four if we consider nós)⁴. Taking the verb falar (to speak) as example, we have:

Singular			Plural
eu	falo		vocês eles/elas	falam
você, ele/ela, a gente	fala

All of this puts Brazilian Portuguese, particularly colloquially, on the verge of being non-prodrop (whereby the subject pronouns are required in conjunction with the verb to convey proper meaning). Even in formal writing, the subject pronoun você is always maintained, and hence nearly never dropped. To express "You are", for instance, the verb by itself will not suffice; it must be used with the pronoun. If a third-person verb form is used without an explicit pronoun, either there will be confusion, or, it will be understood as an impersonal form. This is especially true of certain verbs and tenses, like that of tem (from ter, to have), for example, which in Brazil has ousted há in the sense of "there is/are". Tem, when used without a pronoun, is understood as this impersonal construction. Tem meninos aqui? does not mean "Do you have children here?" nor "Does he have children here?", rather, because there is no pronoun present, it means "Are there any children here?". To express the other two frases, the pronoun needs to be explicitly used, otherwise the meaning changes altogether, i.e. Você tem meninos aqui?, Ele tem meninos aqui?. This occurs, of course, due to the fact that the same verb form is used in all of these cases: third person. In English, do you know whom I'm referring to if I simply say "are good"? No, because the subject could be "we", "you", or "they". This is why the subject is obligatory. In (Brazilian) Portuguese, even though other verb forms remain distinctive (eu, nós), the subject pronoun tends to be used, it would seem as though by analogy with the third person, so that one may hear or read: Eu vim porque eu quis. E eu vou partir quando eu quiser (I came because I wanted to. And I will leave when I want to). This last sentence can be perfectly understood without any of the eu's, and for someone who is not used to it, this may seem overwhelmingly emphatic.

In some regions in Brazil, all of this goes even further: the third-person verb forms are used with even more grammatical persons. In many places of Southern Brazil, including Rio de Janeiro and the southern states, a survival of tu is attested. Indeed, the same tu that is no longer used in the rest of Brazil, and the same that is very alive in Portugal. There is one difference, however: even though tu is indeed second-person, it is used with third-person morphology. That is, what survives is not the standardly tu és, as used in Portugal, but, rather, tu é: tu followed by a verb in the third-person, the same form used with você, i.e. tu fala for (tu) falas, tu vem for (tu) vens⁵. This is sometimes attributed to the loss of final «-s», a phenomenon having ocurred in other languages, such as French and some Spanish dialects. Also noted is the loss of the morphological plural marker, «-s», throughout parts in Brazil, e.g. os livro grande for standard os livros grandes. These realizations are quite accepted at all levels in these regions (except probably in highly formal situations, and in language class!), even though these people are aware of "not using the right conjugation", to put it in their words. This theory of the loss of final «-s» makes senses when we look at the tenses in which only an «-s» distinguishes the second- and third-person singular verb forms from each other, e.g. falas (2nd p.) vs. fala (3rd p.); however, it breaks down when we look at the preterit, where the two forms are quite distinct: falaste vs. falou. In this case, there is no sole «-s» separating the two. In these regions, what we actually hear is tu falou, undoubtedly with third-person morphology, instead of (tu) falaste, where both pronoun and verb are second-person. I put the second tu in parantheses because the verb ending tells us that it is second-person singular, in the preterit, and therefore, not required. However, in the first one, tu falou, the tu is just as important as the verb and is always used, in much the same way than in French (i.e. tu parles, tu viens), where too the unique verb inflection identifying the second-person singular is no longer present (in pronunciation, that is). Sometimes, particularly in the more Southern states like Rio Grande Do Sul, people will use the correct conjugation with tu, though this practice is often regarded as pedantic. Even more, nonstandard forms exist, such as falastes with an extra «-s»⁶, and falasse, where the «t» has assimilated to the following «s». And even when tu is used with verb agreement, the pronoun itself will generally not be dropped, following the previous models, though the person can be devised from the ending; thus, we may hear: Tu tens que vir porque tu deves fazer o que tu não fizeste [or fizesse] (You must come because you must do what you haven't done). This same sentence without verb agreement, which is what more often is heard, and where the pronoun is required, would be: Tu tem que vir porque tu deve fazer o que tu não fiz (cp. the same in French). The corresponding oblique cases used with this are those of the second-person, as in Chart 3B. The reflexive, however, in some regions, like Rio De Janeiro, is se, and in others, like Rio Grande Do Sul, it is te; also, in some parts and some speakers, both você and tu are employed, at times, even in the same utturance. In the Southernmost states, all forms, including the reflexive, belong to the second-person, exactly as in Chart 3B, all of which are employed with verbs in the third-person. In these regions where tu is present, there exists somewhat of a formality attached to using você, with tu being considered more familiar and você being more formal, a formality which is absent in the rest of Brazil, though the distinction between the two is more or less parallel with that found in Portugal and other Romance languages. Chart 4 summarizes these points.
Chart 4

You're not well. You should look at yourself in the mirror.

Tu não tá bem. Tu deve se olhar no espelho.

tu as subject, se as reflexive, verbs in 3rd-person

Tu não tá bem. Você deve se olhar no espelho.

tu as subject in first sentence; você as subject in second sentence, se as reflexive, verbs in 3rd-person

Tu não tá bem. Tu deve te olhar no espelho.

tu as subject, te as reflexive, verbs in 3rd-person

Yet another system in Brazil, which will properly be labeled ocassional, exists, which many some Brazilians will use in given situations. Você is nearly always kept as the subject, with the oblique forms being taken from the second-person, similar to the system just discussed. These people will generally resort to this paradigm to avoid ambiguity, or to emphasize something (or they may just feel like resorting to it!). The reflexive, possessive, and the already established direct and indirect object pronouns of the second person, will emerge even in regions where tu is absent in its subject form (e.g. São Paulo), as we can see in Chart 5.
Chart 5

Subject	você	Você é feliz.
Direct O.	te	Você está aqui? Não tevejo.
Indirect O.	te	Vou te dar algo.
Reflexive	se	Como você se chama?
Possessive	teu	O teu carro está aqui.
Prepositional	ti	Isto é para ti.
	contigo	Ela irá contigo.

You can see here that this is similar to the paradigm in Chart 3C, with você as subject, se as reflexive, now with the possessive and prepositional forms, besides the direct and indirect object ones, coming from the second-person. Again, this is used ocassionally by people who generally do not have tu as a subject, instead having the scheme in Chart 3C as their main one. The same that applies above to the alternation of some forms applies here as well, where, for instance, a sentence with teu may be followed by one with seu or vice versa, e.g. Não me diga que este não é seu carro. Ela já me disse que é teu. (Don't tell me this isn't your car. She already told me it's yours).

Yet another system is one which may be used in formal situations, though in a few regions it is the main one ordinarily used, where the difference lies in the direct and indirect object pronouns.
Chart 6

Subject	você	Você é feliz.
Direct O.	lhe	Você está aqui? Não lhe vejo.
Indirect O.	lhe	Vou lhe dar algo.
Reflexive	se	Como você se chama?
Possessive	seu	O seu carro está aqui.
Prepositional	você	Isto é para você.
	com você	Ela irá com você.

This scheme, when used in formal situations, attempts to follow the system in Chart 3A, except that the form for the direct object does not match. Instead, for this form, we find that it coincides with the direct object, lhe, in a practice which could be called lheismo, much in the same way that leísmo occurs in Spanish⁷. Thus, with this scheme, we hear yet another permutation for the phrase "I love you": Lhe amo (remember, whereas in the rest of Brazil, we'd find either Te amo or Amo você). Lhe, as it was just seen, serves ordinarily solely as an indirect object pronoun, however, here it doubles as a direct object pronoun as well, e.g. Lhe vejo (I see you) vs. Lhe dei um beijo (I gave you a kiss). In the other regions, where people generally follow the schemes presented before, the form with lheismo would be considered formal, used to avoid the single-vowel forms from the direct object (o/a); thus, Lhe vejo against Te vejo and Vejo você.

Having already looked at how some indicative tenses are realized, let's take a look at the imperative. In the imperative, we find a similar situation, where we see second- and third-person forms co-existing.

7A Affirmative Negative você fale! não fale! tu fala! não fales!

7B Affirmative Negative Formal fale! não fale! Informal/Emphatic fala! não fala!

Chart 7A shows the paradigm in the standard language for the imperative singular, affirmative and negative, for most verbs, here using the verb falar (to speak), for você (coming from the third-person) and tu (second-person). Normally, the distinction between these two would be that of formal or familiar address, however, as it has been discussed, tu does not survive in a wholly manner, therefore even though one of its imperative forms is attested in Brazilian Portuguese, the distinction is not truly between você and tu in most speakers, but simply one of formality or a lack thereof. Chart 7B shows that the formal forms are the same than those in 7A, which in most verbs coincide with the present subjunctive of the third-person singular (in this case, fale). In what would be considered more familiar, we find the same form than that for tu in 7A, fala, even in speakers who don't use tu directly; thus, we hear [Você], fala! in familiar situations, even though, prescriptively, only [Tu], fala! is correct (this form coinciding with the present indicative of the third-person singular). Nonetheless, we come back to the same story, tu does not survive in the everyday standard language of Brazil, so forms from this grammatical person should not be present, with prescriptive grammar that is, so what would be correct then is [Você], fale!, though, as I said, this last form has some formality attached to it for (most) Brazilians. In the regions where tu is found, we hear [Tu], fala!, from the second-person, although outside the imperative, tu is employed with the verb in third-person, as was seen above.
In the negative imperative, there is again the formal/familiar distinction even in speakers who only use você. The formal form is the same than that in 7A, não fale!. In 7A, though, there is a different form in the negative (fales) than in the affirmative (fala); the form in the negative comes from the present subjunctive of the second-person singular. In 7B, however, both the familiar affirmative and negative use the same form, fala. Again, prescriptively, only Não fales!, which is what is used in Portugal, is correct (or, since we would expect você in Brazil, the correct form would be Não fale!, but, again, for most people, it carries some formality). You will notice I labeled the second row in 7B "familiar/emphatic"; this is because these forms can be used as well to emphasize a command (as if saying, "Take me seriously! My order is no joke!"), so generally a Não fala! is firmer and more agressive than a Não fale!.
One must keep in mind that just like everything else discussed here, this is subject to regional variation (among other factors), regarding the use and frequency of the different forms, especially when used with clitics. With object pronouns, the rule explained above applies to nearly all cases, so we may hear Me fala!, which is indeed regarded as familiar, though Me fale! can occur, even in speakers for whom the above-mentioned rule applies. With reflexives, it is possible to hear, for example, Se cuida! just as much as Se cuide!, varying from region and individual, even though, here, cuida is an imperative form belonging to the second-person used with the third-person reflexive se, unless we take it at its indicative value, in which case, both would be third-person⁸.

In conclusion, many of the paradigms discussed here are currently the quasi-official standard of Brazil today. Quasi-official because there may be still language purists (ah, yes, don't we love them?) who will defend the prescriptive paradigms and Brazilians may still be tested on them, for instance, in the vestibular, a college-entrance exam; after all, even if not used, these forms are part of the Portuguese language, in general. However, many of the forms and schemes discussed have already entered the Brazilian standard. These are the forms used by everyone, like I say above, from the man in the street to the college graduate, from the child entering first grade to the doctor graduating from med school, used in the media and even formal writing, it's not just some sort of "street slang". Below I include a chart with these quasi-officially standard paradigms, summarizing this discussion, and reviewing what I would call General Brazilian Portuguese (comparable to GAE, General American English). That is, the features that are shared by Brazil as a whole, and what Brazilians view as their everyday standard⁹.
8

Subject	você
Direct O.	te	você
Indirect O.	te	a/pra você
Reflexive	se
Possessive	seu
Prepositional	você
	com você

You will notice that the pronominal scheme in Chart 8 is similar to that in Chart 3A, the difference being in the direct and indirect object forms, which in Chart 6 have been displaced by forms from the second-person (Chart 3B) or forms based on the subject acting as object¹⁰.

Why wasn't the second-person plural discussed? For that, let's head to Portugal.

Portugal
First, we shall take a look at how the pronominal system of the second-person singular is found in Portugal.

9A. Formal Subject você Direct O. o a Indirect O. lhe Reflexive se Possessive seu Prepositional si consigo

9B. Familiar Subject tu Direct O. te Indirect O. te Reflexive te Possessive teu Prepositional ti contigo

In Portugal, we find the formal/familiar distinction between você and tu, with the former as formal and the latter as familiar, though você doesn't carry as much formality anymore as its Spanish counterpart (i.e. usted); in more formal situations, o senhor and a senhora may be employed, as in Brazil. It can seen in Chart 9B that the familiar forms all correspond to the historical second-person, as in Chart 3B. However, the forms used with você have incorporated the two prepositional forms which traditionally were only used reflexively. These forms are found in Brazil as well, though not used in the same context; so while a reflexive phrase like Você tem que trazer isto consigo mesmo (You have to bring this with you[rself]) may be found in both countries, a non-reflexive one, with great formality, in Portugal would be Preciso falar consigo (I need to talk to you), with its equivalent in Brazil being Preciso falar com você; thus the different prepositional forms in Charts 9A and 8, in this aspect, Brazilian Portuguese being conservative (and European Portuguese, then, innovative). Another example we may look at: Isto é para si (This is for you) in Portugal, and, Isto é para você in Brazil.
The whole scheme for the direct address, plural and singular, formal and familiar, looks like this:
Chart 10

	Singular	Plural
Familiar	tu	vocês
Formal	você

In the plural, we can see that there is no distinction in the formal and familiar, per se, at least. As it will be seen, the same person-mixing phenomenon, found in Brazil in the singular, is realized in Portugal as well, only in the plural.

Chart 11A. Third-P. Singular Subject vocês Direct O. os as Indirect O. lhes Reflexive se Possessive seu Prepositional vocês com vocês

Chart 11B. Second-P. Singular Subject vós Direct O. vos Indirect O. vos Reflexive vos Possessive vosso Prepositional vós convosco

Chart 11C. Second-P. Plural Address System Current in Portugal

Subject	vocês	Você é feliz.
Direct O.	vos	Vocês estão aqui? Não vos vejo.
Indirect O.	vos	Vou-vos dar algo.
Reflexive	se	Não sei como se chamam vocês.
Possessive	vosso	Aonde fica o vosso país?
Prepositional	vocês	Isto é para vocês.
	convosco	Ela irá convosco.

The forms that historically belong to the true second-person plural (vós) are underlined. The scheme as seen in Chart 11B does survive in some regions in Portugal, where vós and its corresponding conjugation are used instead of vocês, and yet in other regions, the system in Chart 11A survives without intrusion from the vós forms. However, taking Portugal as a whole, it is the scheme in Chart 11C that is standard in Portugal; these are the forms used by speakers at all levels, in the media, and, this is the system a foreigner would learn if studying European Portuguese. The following phrases summarize these points.

I need to see you / I want to give something to you / Stay in your houses! / I desire to go with you / Shut up!

Preciso ver-vos / Quero-vos dar algo / Fiquem nas vossas casas! / Desejo ir convosco / Calem-se!

As it would be said in Portugal; oblique forms from the second-person (vós), except for the reflexive, which remains in third-person, with verb in third-person plural.

Preciso ver-vos / Quero-vos dar algo / Ficai nas vossas casas! / Desejo ir convosco / Calai-vos!

This one follows the true historically second-person plural, as in Chart 11A; oblique forms all from the second-person, including the reflexive, with verb in the second-person plural as well.

Preciso ver vocês / Quero dar algo pra vocês / Fiquem nas casas de vocês! / Desejo ir com vocês / Se calem!

The same phrase as it would be said colloquially in Brazil, following the models of the singular discussed above; obliques follow some analitical form based on the subject form, except the reflexive, which is in the usual third-person along with the verb; proclise in the imperative.

Preciso vê-los / Quero-lhes dar algo / Fiquem nas suas casas! / Desejo ir com vocês / Calem-se!

This one follows the traditional third-person oblique forms, including the verb; this would be said in Brazil, also, in a more formal context11 and in Portugal if following, historically, prescriptive grammar.

We have just seen how much of a complex topic this is, with forms having all kinds of permutations. In my next post, I will bring more examples, authentic ones, to further illustrate the points here discussed. Also, in the near future, I shall discuss a similar tour de force which has occurred in Spanish, regarding the second-person as well. It seems this second-person will keep us talking for a while.






Footnotes
1. See De nosotros for a discussion. return
2. Another slogan showing this principle is one found on Yahoo! Brazil: Procurando alguém especial? O Yahoo! Encontros ajuda você (Looking for someone special? Yahoo! Meetings helps you). return
3. See Modern Estar and Para in Portuguese. return
4. What's more, in some substandard varieties of Brazilian Portuguese, the six way inflectional system is reduced to simply two, with only the first-person singular being distinct:

Present Singular Plural eu falo nós fala tu, você a gente, ele/ela fala vocês eles/elas

Preterit Singular Plural eu falei nós falou tu, você a gente, ele/ela falou vocês eles/elas

Also in these varieties, the prepositional forms are absent, and in its place we find its corresponding subject forms: com tu for standard contigo (also, com eu for comigo) and pra tu for p[a]ra ti. All of these forms are still quite stigmatised and do not form part of the Brazilian standard. return
5. The only regions where I have attested tu with its corresponding conjugation are some cities in the state of Pará, in Northern Brazil. Professor Pasquale has recorded this use of tu (second-person) with the right conjugation, but at times, employed with the object pronouns corresponding to você (third-person), in this region. He writes (my own translation): "[...] even in Belém (capital of Pará), where, in spite of the verbs and subject [being] in the second-person, sometimes we hear the pronoun lhe: Foste lá? Eu lhe disse que devias ir. return
6. This non-standard form is very frequent in Portugal, colloquially. return
7. See Laísmos, leísmos, liísmos, loísmos, luísmos for a discussion. return
8. It would then be somewhat like in Spanish where the indicative is sometimes used for commands. return
9. By everyday standard, I imply that which is used everyday in the colloquial and written language outside of highly formal situations or, again, language class. I say this because some may argue tu (or vós) is just as standard because it is studied even in school. This is true, I don't argue that these are not part of the language; on the other hand, I am simply saying that these are not used in everyday, ordinary language. An example I could draw here would be the case of thou in English; it is definitely not used anywhere in our language, though we know of its existence and usage through school. A better example, I believe, would be the distinction between who, whom and that, with animates and inanimates, subjects and objects, which is very seldomly made nowadways even in formal texts. Again, we know here what would be correct because of school, even if the proper form is not used all the time outside of there, either because a certain form feels more "natural" or another one feels more "formal", e.g. Who did you see? The woman that I saw vs. (historically) prescriptive Whom did you see? The woman whom I saw (See Language Log's I Don't Really Care Whom. return
10. It is interesting to note that in Italian an opposite phenomenon has taken place, where object forms of the third-person have moved on to act as subjects (these are lei, lui, loro), whereas in Brazilian Portuguese, the subjects have moved on to become objects. return
11. Except that Quero-lhes dar algo would be Quero lhes dar algo, without a hyphen, and with the pronoun truly preposed to the second verb, as oposed to being postposed to the first verb (first phrase). return