Combined pronouns and pronoun placement
Lessons 13 and 14 gave you the direct pronouns (me, te, o, a, nos, os, as) and the indirect ones (me, te, lhe, nos, lhes). Today: what happens when both show up in the same sentence. Classical Portuguese fuses them into a single word — mo, ma, lho, no-lo — and you'll meet those in novels, contracts and hymns. Spoken Brazil went the other way: it keeps one pronoun in front of the verb and spells the other one out as a phrase. Me deu o livro. Dei o livro pra ela. Learn the fused forms so you can read; learn the Brazilian pattern so you can talk.
How the combinations form
The indirect pronoun goes first and swallows the direct one. me + o = mo; me + a = ma; me + os = mos; me + as = mas. te + o = to; te + a = ta. lhe + o = lho; lhe + a = lha; and the plural lhes + o collapses into the very same lho. With nos and vos the -s drops and an l- appears, with a hyphen: nos + o = no-lo, nos + a = no-la, vos + o = vo-lo. That's the whole machine. File it under reading, not speaking: outside of literature and legal Portuguese, almost no one in Brazil produces these.
What they replace
Each half stands for something. In Dei-lho, the lhe is the person who received (to him, to her, to you) and the o is the thing given. So Dei o livro para a Ana compresses to Dei-lho = I gave it to her. Você me mostrou as fotos compresses to Mostrou-mas = you showed them to me. Elegant, compact, and about as current in Brazil as a typewriter. When you hit one in a book, unpack it in two steps: who is the lhe / me / te, and what is the o / a / os / as.
Placement in Brazil: the pronoun goes in front
Here's the rule that actually matters for speaking. In Brazil the pronoun sits BEFORE the verb, and starting a sentence with it is completely normal: Me empresta o carro? Te ligo amanhã. Nos avisaram ontem. Portugal hooks the pronoun onto the back of the verb with a hyphen — Deu-me, Mostrou-lhe — and that order in a Brazilian mouth sounds like someone reading a legal document out loud. Brazil keeps enclisis in exactly two places you'll notice: formal writing, and the affirmative imperative with a reflexive — Sente-se, por favor on a sign or from a receptionist. Everywhere else: pronoun first.
Triggers — the rule you only need for reading
European Portuguese moves its pronoun forward whenever certain words appear: não, the conjunctions que and se, question words, and adverbs like já, sempre, nunca, também. That's why a Portuguese text writes Deu-me o livro but Não me deu o livro. In Brazil this list changes nothing, because the pronoun was already in front: Me deu o livro → Não me deu o livro → Sei que me deu o livro → Já me deu o livro. Same position every time. You still want to know the triggers, because they explain what you're seeing on the page in a Portuguese novel.
Mesóclise — the pronoun inside the verb
There is a third position. When the verb is in the simple future or the conditional and nothing pulls the pronoun forward, classical Portuguese lodges it INSIDE the verb: dar-lho-ei = I shall give it to him; dar-lho-ia = I would give it to him. Two hyphens, one pronoun buried in the middle. This is called mesóclise, and in Brazil it's a punchline — you'll see it in a comedy sketch about a pompous lawyer long before you'll hear it at a bus stop. Recognize it; never build one. Brazil says Vou dar isso pra ele amanhã.
What Brazilians actually say
The Brazilian move is to keep one clitic and let the other information out as a full phrase with para — usually shortened to pra in speech. Me deu o livro. Dei o livro pra ela. Vou mandar pra você. Ninguém me devolveu o dinheiro. Three more habits to copy. First, lhe is rare in Brazilian speech; the everyday version is pra ele, pra ela, pra você. Second, te is the standard object pronoun here even for someone you address as você — Te ligo amanhã is what people say, and no one hears a contradiction. Third, when a thing is obvious, Brazilians simply drop the o / a or replace it with isso: Já te mandei or Já mandei isso pra você, where a Portuguese sentence would say Já to enviei.
