Article or not when addressing a person by name

Portuguese Questions
1

In various places, including the unit on informal and formal forms I just completed, I’ve seen the article o/an included as well as omitted when addressing a person by name. Is there a rule or reason?

(To be clear, I’m not asking about referring to a third person by name, which I understand always requires the article.)

2

Olá, @jim5 :slight_smile: As discussed in the Learning Note Tu and Você in European Portuguese, one of the ways we address people formally is by substituting “você” with their name. It’s as if we were referring to a third person, but we’re actually talking directly to them – in this case, the article is often required (as it would be for a third person). Otherwise, when addressing people informally using “tu”, the article should never be added.

  • João, gostas de vinho? (João, do you like wine?) → Informal, no article
  • O João gosta de vinho? (João, do you like wine?) → Formal, article required
  • João, gosta de vinho? (João, do you like wine?) → Formal, article not required
3 Likes
3

Olá @joseph e muito obrigado! That makes total sense. Perhaps I need to review that lesson? :thinking:

1 Like
4

@jim5, you’re welcome! I’ve added an extra example to my previous post, by the way, because even in formal mode, we don’t always need the definite article (only when we keep the third-person sentence structure) – I forgot to also mention the cases where we still keep the name as a vocative, as we do in the informal treatment.