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- Topic: Portuguese >
- "Teus livros"
14 Comments
Is this valid in Brazil since Brazilians usually use voce form instead of tu form for personal pronouns? How would Brazilians say the following sentence: "You have your apples." -> "Você tem seus/teus maças."
yes, most Brazilians use você, so they'd say "você tem suas maçãs".
why is the Portuguese sentence "teus livros" instead of "teu livros"? Is it necessary to have a plural possessive word before a plural word?
Yup. You have to agree the possessive in gender and number: teu livro, teus livros, tua casa, tuas casas. (Except for dele, dela - where you dont need to change into plural)
"Teu" (and its associated forms) are related to "Tu". If you address someone with "Tu", you'd use teu/tua/teus/tuas to address something they owned.
"Seu" (and its associated forms) are related to "Você" (and also all other third person pronouns, but that's not relevant here). If you address someone with "Você", you'd use seu/sua/teus/tuas to address something they owned.
The ending of the pronoun matches the gender and number of the thing being owned/possessed:
- Teu/Seu - singular masculine noun (teu/seu carro)
- Tua/Sua - singular feminine noun (tua/sua camisa)
- Teus/Seus - plural masculine noun (teus/seus carros)
- Tuas/Suas - plural feminine noun (tuas/suas camisas)
Hi @santosh93, I also have the same query. Good thing @paulenrique already has a ready answer. ;) Thanks!
How would you be able to tell and communicate whether you are attempting to say their or your? Is is simply context?
To avoid ambiguity, we use "deles" to mean their, after the noun. Os livros deles = their books.
No. The definite article should come before possessive adjectives.
