The SE passive particle is a structure of moderate importance. I do not consider it a very important structure because it is rarely used in casual conversations in Portuguese. In our Portuguese classes, we continuously share our opinion with the students about the importance of different grammatical structures. Those that we use daily and with great frequency are very important, while the structures that we use rarely and infrequently are, from our perspective and in our strategy for teaching the Portuguese language, less important.

This grammatical structure is used when the subject of the action is indefinite. The verb depends on the direct object and is conjugated in the 3rd person singular or plural. The “SE” serves as an indefinite pronoun, making the subject of the sentence indeterminate.

Despite rarely using this structure in casual conversations in Portuguese, we often encounter it when walking on the street and seeing this type of information: “Vende-SE“=”For sale” or “Alugam-SE bicicletas”=”Bicycle for rent” The pronoun ‘SE‘ that you can see after the verb (in these examples) is the indefinite pronoun representing people in general or an indeterminate subject