Pronomes relativos
Relative pronouns let you glue two clauses together: 'the book' + 'I read it' → 'the book that I read'. Portuguese has four main ones, and they divide the work cleanly: que is the do-everything workhorse (people or things, subject or object). quem is for people, almost always after a preposition. cujo means 'whose' and agrees with the noun owned. onde means 'where' (and increasingly 'when' in casual speech).
que — the workhorse
que covers most relative clauses in Portuguese. It can refer to people or things and works as either subject or object of the relative clause. It NEVER changes form. Subject: O homem que mora aqui é simpático = The man who lives here is friendly. Object: O livro que li ontem é ótimo = The book that I read yesterday is great. People-as-object: A rapariga que vi na rua era a Inês = The girl (whom) I saw on the street was Inês. English often drops 'that' / 'whom'; Portuguese never does — que is mandatory.
quem — for people, after prepositions
quem is reserved for people, and you'll mostly meet it after a preposition: com quem, de quem, a quem, para quem, sem quem. A pessoa de quem falo = the person I'm talking about. O amigo a quem dei o livro = the friend I gave the book to. A senhora com quem trabalho = the lady I work with. Without a preposition, default to que: a pessoa que vi (NOT a pessoa quem vi — wrong).
cujo — 'whose'
cujo means 'whose'. It agrees in gender and number with the THING OWNED, not the owner — same logic as adjectives. Forms: cujo (m.sg.), cuja (f.sg.), cujos (m.pl.), cujas (f.pl.). O escritor cujo livro li ontem... = The writer whose book I read yesterday... (book is masculine → cujo). A rapariga cuja mãe é médica... = The girl whose mother is a doctor... (mother is feminine → cuja). No article between cujo and the noun: NOT cujo o livro. cujo is bookish — common in writing, journalism, formal speech. In everyday talk, both PT and BR speakers often dodge it with a workaround: a rapariga que tem a mãe médica.
onde — where
onde = where, for places. A cidade onde nasci = the city where I was born. O café onde nos conhecemos = the café where we met. With a preposition of motion, use aonde (to where) or donde (from where), though everyday speech often just uses onde: A casa para onde vamos, A loja de onde venho. In casual speech, onde is also creeping into time contexts where strict grammar wants em que or quando: o dia onde te conheci is heard, but o dia em que te conheci is the textbook form.
o qual — the formal alternative
Portuguese also has o qual / a qual / os quais / as quais ('which / whom'), used in formal writing or when que would be ambiguous. It agrees in gender and number with what it refers to, and is especially handy after prepositions of more than one syllable: a casa na qual vivi (the house in which I lived) reads more clearly than a casa em que vivi in formal text. In everyday speech, plain que wins. Worth recognizing more than producing at A2.
Brazilian register: same forms, looser feel
The four main relatives — que, quem, cujo, onde — are the same in PT and BR. The differences are stylistic. cujo is even rarer in spoken BR than in spoken PT; Brazilians paraphrase: o escritor que o livro dele eu li (technically substandard but heard), or just o escritor que escreveu o livro que eu li. Onde for time is a little more common in BR everyday speech. And in BR, double-pronoun constructions like o homem que ele mora aqui (the redundant ele) appear in casual speech — non-standard, but you'll hear it.
