Tropeçais

Tropeçais is a Portuguese verb form, the second-person plural present indicative of tropeçar, meaning to stumble or trip. It is used with the pronoun vós, which in European Portuguese represents a formal or archaic plural you. The form tropeçáis is spelled with a cedilla under the c to denote the soft s sound before a, e, or i, and it carries the characteristic -áis ending of the vós conjugation in the present tense.

In contemporary Brazilian Portuguese, the vós forms are rarely used in everyday speech, and the equivalent present-tense meaning is typically expressed with vocês tropeçam. Consequently, tropeçais is most commonly encountered in prescriptive European Portuguese grammar, historical texts, or literary contexts where the vós form remains preserved.

Grammatically, tropeçar is a regular -çar verb, and its present indicative paradigm for vós follows the pattern tropeço, tropeças, tropeça, tropeçamos, tropeçáis, tropeçam. Other tenses and moods (imperfect, future, subjunctive) have their own corresponding vós forms, but the vós paradigm is increasingly seen as literary or formal.

Pronunciation of tropeçáis places the accent on the endings -áis, with the c pronounced as an s sound before a. The form may appear in discussions of Portuguese morphology, historical documents, or language instruction that covers alternative pronouns and their verb agreements.

See also: Portuguese conjugation, tropeçar, vós.