Brazilian Portuguese Grammar

When should you use o, a, lhe, os, as, lhes?

The pronouns o, os (masculine) and a, as (feminine) function as direct objects (verb complements that accompany verbs without a preposition), while lhe, lhes (masculine and feminine) function as indirect objects (they susbtitute preposition + noun or preposition + pronoun), but they only refer to the 3rd persons singular and plural.

Functions	Masculine singular	Masculine plural	Feminine singular	Feminine plural
Direct object	o	os	a	as
Indirect object	lhe	lhes	lhe	lhes

Examples:

Eu dei o livro para ela - Ele lhe dei o livro.

(I gave the book to her - I gave her the book)

Eu disse a verdade a ele - Eu lhe disse a verdade.

( I told the truth to him - I told him the truth)

*prepositions

Attention:

The words a and as can be the feminine definite articles;
A can be a preposition (at, to);
A can also be demonstrative pronouns (this, that).
The words o and os can be the masculine definite articles;
O and os can also be demonstrative pronouns (this, that / these, those).

Special forms of object pronouns

The pronouns o, os, a, as must change into the forms below when they follow verbs ending in -r, -s ,-z, -m, -ão, -õe, -am and -em:

	-r, -s ,-z	Example	-m, -ão, -õe, -am, -em	Example
o	lo	dizer + o = dizê-lo	no	dizem + o = dizem-no
os	los	dividir + o = dividi-los	nos	dividem + os = dividem-nos
a	la	beber + a = bebê-la	na	propõe + a propõe-na
as	las	amar + a = amá-las	nas	ajudam + as = ajudam-nas
Always use a hyphen to attach special forms to verbs; The special forms are only used when object pronouns are in enclitic or mesoclitic position. Read Object pronouns & placement rules for further information; When you attach special forms to verbs in -r, you must mark the verb-final vowel a, e and o with a circumflex accent: olhá-los, bebê-lo, propô-la; The special forms appear due to a phonological process called assimilation.