Você vs Tu in Brazilian Portuguese (Which One Should You Actually Learn?)

Olá! This is one of the first questions English speakers bring to me, and the answer is friendlier than the grammar books make it sound.

The short answer

If you are learning Brazilian Portuguese, start with você. It is the pronoun you will hear most often, in almost every city and almost every social situation, from your taxi driver to a job interview.

Where tu still lives in Brazil

You will hear tu in parts of the South of Brazil, in the Northeast, in Rio and in some specific communities. The interesting part is that many Brazilians who use tu in speech still conjugate the verb as if it were você. So you might hear "tu vai" instead of the textbook "tu vais."

This is normal, it is alive, and it is part of why Brazilian Portuguese is so musical.

So what should a beginner do?

Learn você first. Master the você conjugations, which match the third-person singular of every regular verb. Once that is solid, you will instantly understand the spoken tu you encounter in Rio or Salvador, even when it bends the rules.

Plural matters too

In Brazil, the plural is almost always vocês for "you all." The European vós is essentially extinct in everyday Brazilian speech. One less thing to memorize.

Adriely, sua professora brasileira. Te vejo na próxima aula.