In European Portuguese (as well as in Africa, Timor-Leste and Macau), (singular "you") is commonly used as the familiar addressing pronoun, while is a general form of address; (plural both of and ) is used for both familiar and general. The forms and (plurals and ) are used for more formal situations (roughly equivalent to "Mr/Sir" and "Mrs/Madam".) Similarly to some Romance languages (e.g. Italian), , or / can be omitted because the verb ending provides the necessary information. The second person plural pronoun , from Latin , is archaic in most of the Portuguese-speaking world, but can be heard in liturgy, poetry and has a limited regional use.
