Possessives + family vocabulary
Portuguese possessives behave like adjectives: they agree with the thing owned, never with the owner. minha casa is feminine because casa is, whoever lives there — a man says it exactly the same way. The everyday Brazilian set is meu/minha, seu/sua, nosso/nossa, plus dele/dela/deles when you need to be clear about whose. Portugal glues an article in front — o meu pai — and we usually don't: meu pai.
The possessives — the shape
meu / minha / meus / minhas = my. seu / sua / seus / suas = your, the one that goes with você. nosso / nossa / nossos / nossas = our. For 'their', Brazilians reach for deles / delas, literally 'of them'. Each one agrees with the noun that follows it: meu pai, minha mãe, meus irmãos, minhas amigas. There is also a tu set — teu / tua / teus / tuas. You'll hear it in Rio, in the South and in half the songs on the radio, often dropped into sentences that otherwise use você; you never have to produce it.
PT vs BR — the article
Portugal says o meu pai, a minha mãe, os meus filhos — article, then possessive, then noun. Brazil normally drops the article: meu pai, minha mãe, meus filhos. You will still hear o meu pai in São Paulo and Minas, and it isn't wrong here, but the bare form is the safe default and it's the one this course teaches. After a preposition, the contraction simply follows whichever you picked: a casa da minha mãe and a casa de minha mãe are both good Portuguese.
seu / sua — handle with care
seu is a chameleon. Next to você it means 'your': seu nome, sua casa. Next to ele or ela it could mean his or hers — and that ambiguity is exactly where Brazilians bail out and use dele / dela / deles instead: a casa dele = his house, a casa dela = her house, a casa deles = their house. Those sit after the noun and never change shape for the thing owned. One more thing worth knowing: in Brazil seu in front of a man's first name means 'Mr.' — seu José is how you greet the neighbour, and his wife is dona Maria.
Family vocabulary
pai = father and mãe = mother, and the masculine plural covers the pair: os pais = the parents. filho / filha = son / daughter; os filhos = the children. irmão / irmã = brother / sister. avô / avó = grandfather / grandmother — the only difference on the page is the hat, but the sounds are clearly different: avô is ah-VOH (closed), avó is ah-VAW (open), and os avós = the grandparents. Affectionately Brazilians say vô and vó. tio / tia = uncle / aunt, pronounced CHEE-oo and CHEE-ah; children call any friendly grown-up tio or tia. primo / prima = cousin. Husband and wife are marido and esposa.
Putting it together
Meu pai é brasileiro. Minha mãe trabalha numa loja. Meus irmãos moram no Rio. Nossa casa é pequena. Minhas amigas falam inglês. And the sentence you'll use on day one: Me chamo Ana. The little pronoun me comes first — that front position is standard in Brazil, and it's why nobody here says 'Chamo-me Ana' — that's the Portuguese order, and in Brazil it sounds like something read off a page. Even more common in speech: Meu nome é Ana. For somebody else: Ele se chama Pedro., Ela se chama Maria.
