What Does Cuja or Cujo Mean in Portuguese?

What does Cuja/Cujo mean in Brazilian Portuguese? Cujo/Cuja is a pronoun in Portuguese that means ‘whose’ and precedes a noun without an article, but is employed as an adjective pronoun. For Example:

 “qual será o animal cujo nome a autora não quis escrever?” – “which would be the animal whose name the author did not wish to write?”

“gosto muito desse compositor cujas músicas sei de cor.” – “i really like that composer whose songs I know by heart.”

As one can observe, cujo/cuja has a possessive value that agrees in gender and number with the object possessed. Keep in mind that it isn’t used in everyday speech but you will often encounter it in written Portuguese.

*Sources:

http://eyesonbrazil.com/

Grammar Lessons: Pronouns in Portuguese

Portuguese Personal Pronoun Lesson

*In Brazil, with nouns having gender, it is very common to use ele/ela to refer to objects. For example: “eu achei ele” – “i found it” (referring to a masculine noun).

eu – i

você – you (singular)

ele – he, it (m)

ela – she, it (f)

vocês – you (plural)

nós – we

eles – they, them (m)

elas – they, them (f)

*You can avoid using the plural forms of verbs altogether by using “a gente” – for we, and “todo mundo” – the entire world/everyone,  for they. Both forms use 3rd person singular and are very commonly used in Brazilian Portuguese. 

Pronouns for “You” in Portuguese

These can be a little confusing, especially for those transitioning from other Romance languages to Brazilian Portuguese. Today in Brazil, você and vocês are by far the most commonly used pronouns to say “you.” Vós is almost never used, and tu is used only in certain areas such as the Northeast (nordeste) and the Brazilian state Rio Grande do Sul. Thus, virtually all of Brazil does NOT use the verb endings for tu and vós (i.e. no 2nd person verbs), making it much easier to learn just the 1st and 3rd person.

However, most Brazilians do use the informal reflexive pronoun te (based on tu and the same word as Spanish and French).

Since this eliminates much of the grammar-based formality, when you need to be formal (for example, when you are talking to an elder) replace você with “o senhor” for a man, and “a senhora” for a woman.