Hey, everyone!
Today’s Word of the week is a possessive pronoun: our plural your; despite using vocês as a personal pronoun, European Portuguese uses vosso/vossa/vossos/vossas (which originates from vós), as a possessive!
This means that if something is owned by a plural you, you’ll probably call it by this pronoun:
- O carro é vosso. The car is yours (addressing more than one person as the owners).
- A vossa casa é bonita. Your house is pretty.
In Brazil, one can either use the 3rd person plural possessive [seu/sua/seus/suas] – which can cause confusion, since it’s the same form you use for ele/ela – to disambiguate, Brazilians will generally use de vocês (“o carro de vocês”; “a casa de vocês”), which is quite frowned upon in Portugal.
If you want to read more about European Portuguese possessives, please read this post I wrote a few months ago on this subject, and have a nice week!
